Cognitive Dissidents discussion

SO, I started working for "Hummer Floors". It was NOT a 'good job'. It was HELL. Dave started off paying me LESS THAN MINIMUM WAGE: I was pd $3 an hr in 1978. I started out doing him a favor & got more & more sucked into working w/ him b/c I was desperately poor & at least he wd hire me - despite my blatant 'eccentricities'. I hated it.

Why didn't I do what the other kids I was friends w/ had done & go to college & get a 'good job'? The easy answer is b/c I was a FUCKING REVOLUTIONARY. The more detailed answer will take awhile, but, again, this history is necessary (& actually very sparse) for my introduction to the subject at hand.

I hated school. I saw it as an indoctrination center training me to "know my place". When my parents bought the house I grew up in, they were too poor to afford to buy the land the house was on so they had to pay land rent! My mom (who actually raised me - my dad split) 'knew her place' although she wd've never been able to articulate it or even understand MY understanding of it: she was a SERF. & that's what I was expected to be. Higher expectations? Nah.. Be a SERF too - that's a good boy, lay down & die in yr brain & work for God & the Government - they know what's best.

I had no intention of being a serf. I was an instant runaway slave from the day I was born. & this was NOT appreciated. At school, even though I was recognized as 'intelligent', I was in trouble from time to time & not a 'good student'. By the time I barely graduated from high school, any paperwork regarding me (the beginning of my bureaucratic trail) made me look 'retarded' to some undiscerning eyes.

I was expected to at least TRY to go to college, perhaps an arts college. I maintained that true creativity can't be taught & that if I were to be an artist, I'd be so from my own internal resources. I decided to be a hitch-hiker/drifter instead. This, understandably, terrified my mom. I did it anyway, of course, & spent ages 17 to 19 wandering around North America w/ no money in situations that cd be rightfully called a little dangerous at times - managing to escape unscathed from rape threats, arrests, sleeping outside w/ no sleeping bag or blanket, nearly freezing my feet a bit TOO far, etc..

After this period, I decided I needed some discipline & applied to a local college, UMBC. They wdn't accept me b/c I refused to sign a form saying I wdn't take drugs on campus. Almost everyone was at least smoking pot on campus but they just signed the paper knowing they didn't mean it. I refused to sign, I was turned away. As usual, honesty had its penalty - a lesson learned early on in most societies I reckon - but certainly in capitalist / totalitarian ones. Catonsville Community College accepted me. It cost $118 per semester & my family cdn't afford that - so it wdn't've been easy to shuffle me into a college anyway even if I'd really wanted to take that path.

It's worth injecting here that I have many friends who go to $30,000+ a yr universities w/o, perhaps, noting that that price is, uh, a bit STEEP for most people. My family cdn't afford $236 a yr in 1973 & they sure as FUCK cdn't afford $30,000+ 35 yrs later. I dropped out of CCC - it was unbelievably boring.

My revolutionary ass moved into the hellhole of inner-city Baltimore & started furthering its education of just how miserable poor people's lives were - simultaneously deepening my interest in the 'avant-garde' culture I'd been creating on my own & gradually discovering elsewhere. Now the notion of 'avant-garde' culture as REVOLUTIONARY is mostly incomprehensible to my younger punk anarchist friends these days - if they'd even have any idea of what I'm talking about, they might just think something like 'Oh, there goes tENT again w/ that old people stuff..'. [Alright, my friends don't think like that but I'm oversimplifying here to try to speed thru writing this & get back to a vaudeo project. - & not succeeding too well, eh?!]

There I was, a feakazoid-out-the-wazoo in a particularly intolerant & debased culture, by 1978 working as a hard-wood floor finisher & trying to inject some cultural revolution into whatever paths my down-&-out working-class lifestyle lead me into. My friend from high school & the short yrs thereafter, John Duchac (later known as "John Doe") got out of Baltimore pretty quickly - figuring it to be a dead and street for him - & moved to LA where he cd 'make it' as a musician - wch he did. I decided to stay where I was 'needed' - in Baltimore, where I figured a little cultural mischief was sorely called for in the body politic of the killing machine of capitalist society's degrading relationship to everything it cd use & spit out - like my grandfather.

FINALLY, something a little closer to the point of this tale. Having the attitude of LET'S LIVE LIFE IN ACCORDANCE W/ OUR IMAGINATION & IN RESISTANCE TO THE OPPRESSOR WHEREVER IT MAY MANIFEST ITSELF, I went so far as to do things at the floor finishing job like get the boss, Dave, to film me getting out of the truck & going into a job & actually sanding the edges of a floor NAKED except for a rubber mask & rubber feet & hands.

Now, that, believe it or not, is a manifestation of my idea of Class Warfare in Culture. 1st, it took balls; 2nd, the resultant film product did not meet any of 'polite society's' aesthetic standards; 3rd, it subverted Dave's extremely limited perspective on life; 4th, if I got caught, I'd inevitably be labelled as that fucking pervert; 5th, & most importantly, I took my work situation & turned it into something it was never ever supposed to be: PLAY; etc..

One might wonder why I'm not exactly the kind of guy society's exactly rushing to say is any good at anything I do or deserves to exist or anything. My explanation (in this quickie text that readers probably already think is too long) is that I scare society much more deeply than many people understand. Wd a grant-giver give money to a guy who makes films like the one described above or to an art student girl who makes something nice about her mom & uses an image of a Greek sculpture & whatever the latest software available from her school is?

My mother writes to me in a letter which I received two days ago:

Dear Erin,
I hope you like this outfit and that it keeps you warm and dry.
I worry about you so much and hope you're doing well.
This afternoon, I went to Ross'. They're out on Rt. 28 past Aunt Patty's- not far.
Paws was chasing your ribbon!
I can't help it- I do write about shopping, the weather and Paws! That's what I am--somewhat!
I love you Erin and you really are a supreme girl. Don't get caught up in changing the world- it's been around for a long time!
Focus on writing- your stories are very neat and some are like cliff hangers.
I hope you reconsider and come home to Pittsburgh for a while.
I miss you a bushel and a peck. You know the rest!
Be careful out there please
Love always,
mom

Yep, "Don't get caught up in changing the world- it's been around for a long time!" - oddly, though, I don't think Geogre Bush has been president the whole time.. Or has he? It's so hard to remember.. Was there ever life before shopping malls? Nah, that's physically impossible! I distinctly remember learning in school, that the lowest form of matter is the coin.

Reading Lewis Yablonsky's great bk "Robopaths" brings me back to the tale I tell above: "Having the attitude of LET'S LIVE LIFE IN ACCORDANCE W/ OUR IMAGINATION & IN RESISTANCE TO THE OPPRESSOR WHEREVER IT MAY MANIFEST ITSELF, I went so far as to do things at the floor finishing job like get the boss, Dave, to film me getting out of the truck & going into a job & actually sanding the edges of a floor NAKED except for a rubber mask & rubber feet & hands." Yablonsky writes:

"It is important to note that robot and humanistic roles can be severely modified by the role-occupant. Role-occupants, depending on their personality, can break through the role straight-jacket even though it is more difficult in a robot role than in a humanistic role.

"For example, some people occupying robot roles add a dimension of creativity and spontaneity to what they do to overcome the doldrums of action. They inject some novel, different or creative dimension into their expected acting out."