In a recent getaway trip to Miami Beach, I walked down to the beach for the morning sunrise, contemplating the Republican onslaught that is now invading balmy Florida. As Newt Gingrich drops his most recent money bomb, chafing the airwaves with radioactive populist attacks, and as Mitt Romney proudly defends his success atop the 1% as a beacon of hope and prosperity, yes my fellow citizens, wake up!, it’s time to greet the new dawn.
The California Institute of the Arts of the late 1970s/early 1980s was a giddy time: when the annual Halloween party was laced with psychedelics; when a grad student sprayed fake blood all over the President’s suit at the graduation ceremony; when a giant inflatable penis filled the courtyard and burst to everyone’s delight. Yes, those were heady times.
And yet, there was nothing so serious as those towering composers who attended the 1981 CalArts Contemporary Music Festival: oh, those composers, who frightened us all with their late-20th century modernist prowess, waiting with critical ears to hear the latest works by their daunted disciples at the student concert. 
I was one of those students, preparing to unveil my epic song cycle set to the tortured poetry of Arthur Rimbaud. There was a tense silence that evening, the kind you’ll only experience at concerts of contemporary music. We waited for Charles to emerge from backstage, the tenor with the silky voice who had been singing my oh so feverishly-romantic-art-school-music for the past two years. The anticipation was palpable. At last, the backstage door opened, and out came Charles in the most gloriously bizarre, cum Las Vegas review get-up. No one had laid eyes on this rippling, swirl of fabric, or even known about it – not even the accompanist nor me! There was an audible gasp from the composers as Charles took the stage wrapped in what we would later dub the “bumble-bee costume,” standing there unflappable, perfectly composed, his expressive, dreamy eyes oblivious to the stares that laser-beamed on his bare shoulders. My heart sank as I looked around at the gaping mouths.
My epic song cycle lasted a grueling 45 minutes: Rimbaud and the bumble-bee costume, love and death and exposed flesh. Now and then there were a few quiet giggles and hushed murmurs from the audience, but otherwise a rapt, uncomfortable silence pervaded as Charles heroically made it through the last song. After a short, embarrassed applause, the accompanist escaped the scene of the crime as quickly as possible and Charles followed suit, both racing out the stage door. The lights came up, everyone in shock, not a word spoken. I bee-lined out of the concert hall and ran back stage to find Charles, but he was nowhere to be found, only the accompanist remained, swearing bitterly to himself. I ran off campus and headed directly for Charles’ apartment amidst the perfectly kept condos down the hill from CalArts in suburban Valencia. I knocked on the door, his roommate answered and said that Charles was upstairs in his room. I ran up the stairs and found poor Charles, lying there in his bed, sobbing hysterically, declaring with tears streaming down his face: “Randall, I am so sorry, I have ruined your career!”
Well, my career wasn’t exactly ruined that night, but years later, in the era of Gaga, I wonder if perhaps we were just a little ahead of our time. The oh, so dreadfully serious contemporary music scene needs a good shot in the arm now and then, a gentle reminder that glitter and angst do work together to give a hilariously moronic shock to the senses. Even Arthur Rimbaud would have relished the look of horror that was unleashed on those unsuspecting composers of contemporary good taste.
That was what I learned in art school.
Whereas secret, underground, forbidden government enclaves in Washington cannot be divulged due to their sensitive nature, my studio-bunker, nestled into the quiet neighborhood of Glover Park, is an open-studio, where I conduct the daily ritual of making art in front of and for the camera.
Welcome! It’s a space not without its own dangers, but you’ll find its quiet solitude conducive to dreaming post-real situations.
While post-911 trauma here in Washington has led to the construction of underground worlds hidden away from nuclear holocausts and other terrorist efforts yet to materialize, my studio-bunker is a portal to a different kind of Underworld, a little more Dantesque in nature, an Orphic journey into places of the unknown. This Underworld leads to subterranean regions that reveal the atrocities of seductive, human intent, the falsification of everything we know and desire, which even the CIA couldn’t dream up. My studio-bunker is a direct conduit to those forbidden places in America, the portal to unimaginable situations that rattle the soul and provide endless fodder for artistic renderings. It is here I manage an endlessly growing mountain of documentation that staggers the mind, my very own Library of Congress.
Yes, I’ve seen the darkness. Which is why my investigation of the post reality has taken on such epic proportions. Yes, I’ve seen what lurks beneath the surface of the everyday, I’ve traveled to places as horrifying as Crawford, Texas on a blistering summer day watching Christian bikers co-mingle with Cowboy activists shouting apocalyptic warnings to Hippie anti-war demonstrators who descended on this hot, dusty town in the backyard of George W. Bush’s pseudo-ranch.
And like the secret bunker drilled down deep beneath the Vice-President’s mansion, which Dick Cheney orchestrated in his finest hour of madness in order to stage his very own shadow government, my studio-bunker leads directly to the headquarters of the US Department of Art & Technology. It was here for a few brief years that I imagined my very own virtual government agency: a breeding ground for staging heroic acts of artistic mediation which, unfortunately, never quite succeeded in changing the world. You can’t say I didn’t try…
OK, but it’s sure quiet down here, perhaps a little gloomy for most people’s tastes, but I manage to keep my spirits up: dreaming the impossible, jotting down a few inspired notes in my journal now and then, savoring some delicious bit of irony in the unfolding circus of this town. Perhaps on one of my investigative journeys into the sub-level of my studio-bunker, I’ll meet up with some of my old, Washington cronies who inhabit the netherworld of the nation’s capital. Whatever happened to Dick Cheney you might wonder? Most likely sipping a cognac in the confines of his own, cozy little office-bunker, dreaming impossible dreams.
A flurry of emails just arrived from Paul. It all comes back to me as a long-ago hallucination, that fateful night at Sambo’s in Lake Oswego, Oregon. It was the 70s, and Sambo’s was one of the last remnants of the not-so-politically-correct 1950s culture.
Sitting next to me at the formica counter was Paul. He was hard to ignore, sitting there with his sheets of paper, a multitude of pens, busily scribbling away into the night like some mad apparition from another planet. I was quietly reading Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. This was nearly forty years ago (we were kids, just out of high school…), and yet, I can still hear that whispery voice, mellowed by the 60s and too much LSD, coming from nowhere, saying: “you’re either on or you’re off the bus.” Well, that began an 8-hour conversational binge over gallons of rancid Sambo’s coffee.
We eventually went our separate ways: I hadn’t heard from him in over 30 years. We all thought he was dead. He’s not, and his mad rants and visionary tirades still prevail, after all those years. Paul is still a savant. The last time we spoke, the Internet didn’t exist. Now those splintered, half-crazed, half-genius ideas are landing in my in box, after 30+ years, that voice, whispering again:
At any age, always remember time.
Time is perfect.
If we observe, or do the right thing….it’s an amazing experience.The rest of Time is probably compense.
Forget about its un-even-ness.
Its un-equals.Go with the float.
Just a little opinion, in way of advice –
not to waste your life.Even if you have a long one,
never waste it.it’s too good.
yes?
maybe no – yew deecide.
-
yur friend
