Slow Motion Knuckles and Basement Ethics

Garage punk violence, wrestling nostalgia, and a code that still matters...

I grew up on blood and body slams.

Horror movies. Sci-fi. Action films. Anime. And professional wrestling in its loud neon '80s glory and its grittier '90s chaos. I loved all of it—the spectacle, the pageantry, the violence as theater. I never bought the idea that liking violent art makes you violent. That is lazy thinking. Violence in art is confrontation. It is rehearsal. It is mythology played out in sweat and noise.

Now I am a Quaker, which means I take peace seriously—not as a brand, but as a testimony. I oppose war. I oppose systems that turn violence into policy. I oppose domination as a structure. But I do not believe in passivity in the face of harm. I believe in defense. I believe in drawing a line. I believe that intent and fairness matter. That is why Letterkenny works for me in a way that surprises people.

The fights in Letterkenny are not chaotic. They are ritual.

Slow motion. Shoulders loosening. Knuckles flexing. Eye contact. The music kicks in, and it is angular garage punk. It sounds like it belongs in a basement show where the floor is sticky and the amps are too loud. When the punches land, it feels less like a bar fight and more like a mosh pit. If you have ever been in a real pit, you know there is a code. You collide hard but you do not cheap shot. Someone falls, you pick them up. The aggression is real, but it is contained. It ends when the song ends.

That is what Jared Keeso understands. Violence without a code is chaos. Violence with a code is conflict with boundaries. And those boundaries are everything. Before fists fly, mouths do. Letterkenny is built on chirping. Surgical trash talk. Weaponized wit. It is what Marc Maron once described as punching with your mouth—words that sting, test pride, and escalate.

But even that has rules. It is performance. It is ritualized confrontation. When someone crosses into dishonor, the show makes that clear. Which brings me to wrestling. I grew up in the Golden Era of '80s wrestling—big characters, clear heroes and villains. It was a morality play in spandex. The violence was exaggerated but symbolic. A wrong was committed. A babyface stood up. A villain cheated and got what was coming to him. There was a code even in the spectacle.

But as wrestling moved into the '90s Attitude Era, something shifted. The conflict stopped being about honor and started being about shock. It was often about humiliation, about dominance, about bigger men brutalizing smaller people, about violence against women played for heat, about degradation for ratings. It was entertaining. It was chaotic. It was fun in a reckless way, but it did not always age well.

The Attitude Era leaned into spectacle without restraint. It sometimes forgot the code. It confused escalation with storytelling. It chased shock instead of resolution. That is where it parts ways with Letterkenny and Shoresy. In Keeso’s world, masculinity is not about domination. It is about conviction. It is about standing up when something is wrong. It is about being willing to fight but not needing to.

Wayne does not fight because he enjoys hurting people. He fights because someone crossed a line. Shoresy chirps like a menace, but he plays hard and protects his team. They do not target the weak. They do not escalate endlessly. They do not glorify cruelty. If someone breaks the code, they are treated as cowardly.

That is ethical masculinity.

It is not chest beating. It is not about being the biggest guy in the room. It is about consistency. About backing up your words. About protecting people who cannot protect themselves. About knowing when to walk away. From a punk scene perspective, that makes sense. Hardcore taught me that aggression without community rots fast. Strength without compassion turns authoritarian quickly. Conviction without humility becomes fascism in a leather jacket.

The slow motion in Letterkenny matters because it shows you the ritual. It slows everything down so you see the consent. You see the mutual recognition. You see that this is not random cruelty. It is pride meeting pride and resolving.

It looks like violence. It feels like a mosh pit. But it ends with respect.

Wrestling at its best understood that too. When it forgot that and leaned into humiliation and degradation, it became something else—something louder but emptier.

As a Quaker punk with a soft spot for piledrivers and power chords, I can hold all of that at once.

Violence in art can be meaningful.  

Masculinity can have a code.  

Conflict can end.  

Respect can follow.

The difference between ritual and rot is boundaries. And boundaries are everything.

Rebellion From the Inside: Why Belonging Doesn’t Mean Obedience

I’ve always been rebellious by nature. Not in a performative sense, no reflexive contrarianism, no automatic rejection of whatever’s popular, but in the quieter, more inconvenient way. The kind of rebellion that asks why when everyone else has already accepted that’s just how it is.

Rebellion, to me, isn’t about standing apart just to feel special. It’s about refusing to let comfort, popularity, or group approval replace thinking. And that matters most inside the groups we identify with.

Belonging Is Easy, Thinking Is Not

Somewhere along the way, people started confusing belonging with obedience.

If you criticize pop music, someone says, “All music scenes have conformity.”

If you criticize your own political side, someone says, “If you identify with any group at all, you’re conforming.” If you question norms within a community, you’re accused of disloyalty.

It’s a clever rhetorical move. It flattens everything until no distinction matters anymore. If everything is conformity, then the concept stops being useful. You can’t critique power, culture, or norms if all behavior is treated as equally compliant.

That isn’t insight, it’s resignation dressed up as philosophy.

Why Pop Music Is a Useful Example

When people say pop music can feel boring or unchallenging, they’re usually not attacking listeners, at least I'm not and haven't since I was in my 20s since now I myself listen to Pop Music.  What we are describing is a structure.

Pop music is often engineered for mass appeal. It’s shaped by radio formats, streaming algorithms, branding concerns, and market incentives that reward familiarity and punish risk. That doesn’t make it bad or illegitimate, it just makes it managed.

And when art is managed, experimentation becomes a liability.

Pointing that out isn’t elitism, it’s media literacy. The same dynamic exists everywhere, politics, labor, activism, religion, culture. Once something grows large enough, it starts protecting itself from friction. That’s when rebellion becomes necessary.

The Most Interesting People Rebel From Within

Here’s what gets lost in these arguments. Rebelling against a group you care about is harder, and far more meaningful, than rejecting it from the outside.

Outsiders can dismiss a movement without cost. Insiders who push back risk being labeled difficult, disloyal, or disruptive. They risk losing status, access, and belonging. But every movement worth anything was shaped by people who loved it enough to argue with it.

They didn’t want to burn it down. They wanted it to live. That kind of rebellion isn’t betrayal, it’s responsibility.

Conformity Isn’t Belonging

Conformity happens when questioning becomes inconvenient. When consensus replaces curiosity. When comfort becomes more important than truth.

Belonging, at its best, should create space for disagreement, not demand silence in exchange for acceptance. A group that can’t tolerate internal criticism doesn’t want members, it wants mirrors. And mirrors don’t build culture. They just reflect it back unchanged.

Why I’ll Always Push Back

I rebel because I care. I push because stagnation is the real enemy. I question because I don’t trust anything that demands compliance as proof of loyalty.

I don’t want purity tests.

I don’t want brands disguised as movements.

I don’t want to be told I’m on the right side as a substitute for thinking.

I want living cultures, not museums.

I want living movements, not slogans.

I want living music, not product.

And living things only survive when someone inside them is willing to say, this isn’t good enough yet.

Operation Disconnect: The Anti-Capitalist Digital Exodus

Operation Disconnect: The Anti-Capitalist Digital Exodus

Objective:

To organize a mass social media deletion event as a direct action against Silicon Valley’s monopolistic control while integrating a broader anti-capitalist labor and political movement that challenges corporate power, digital colonialism, and economic exploitation.

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Phase 1: Political & Labor Mobilization (Weeks 1-4)

1. Coalition Building

• Union Outreach: Engage with labor unions (APWU, IWW, DSA labor groups) to connect digital exploitation to workplace struggles.
• Tech Worker Solidarity: Connect with groups like Tech Workers Coalition to encourage internal sabotage, leaks, or even digital labor strikes.
• Anti-Capitalist Orgs: Work with leftist political groups (PSL, FRSO, Black Socialists, Anarchist collectives) to frame the exodus as a broader rejection of capitalist surveillance culture.

2. Ideological Narrative

• Social Media as Digital Wage Theft: Explain how big tech extracts unpaid labor from users via content creation and data harvesting.
• AI & Automation as Union-Busting Tools: Expose how platforms use AI to exploit workers while displacing traditional labor.
• Silicon Valley as a Class Enemy: Highlight how social media corporations reinforce neoliberal hegemony, suppress labor organizing, and create psychological dependency for profit.

3. Soft Exit Strategy

• User Data as Collective Power: Encourage people to download their data, opt out of tracking, and detox from algorithmic feeds.
• Alternative Infrastructure: Promote Mastodon (Twitter alternative), Lemmy (Reddit alternative), Matrix (Discord alternative), PeerTube (YouTube alternative) as decentralized, worker-controlled platforms.
• Real-World Organizing: Encourage people to reinvest time into labor organizing, community building, and independent media creation.

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Phase 2: The Digital Strike (Week 5 - Execution Week)

1. Coordinated Mass Deletion

• Set a fixed date for mass exodus from major platforms (Meta, X/Twitter, TikTok, Reddit, Snapchat, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc.).
• Users post final messages exposing digital exploitation and calling for anti-capitalist organizing before deleting accounts.

2. Disruptive Actions

• Algorithm Sabotage: Flood platforms with anti-Silicon Valley messaging before leaving, making engagement data useless.
• Engagement Boycott: Urge people to stop clicking ads, liking posts, or using recommendation systems in the days leading up to deletion.
• Trend Hijacking: Use mass hashtags that mix viral pop culture trends with explicit anti-capitalist messaging.

3. Workplace Resistance

• Encourage tech workers and digital gig workers (content moderators, data labelers, Amazon Mechanical Turk workers, etc.) to slow down work, leak internal documents, or organize digital strikes.

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Phase 3: Post-Exodus Political Action

1. Building an Alternative Political & Economic System

• Decentralized Digital Infrastructure: Support cooperatively owned social media, worker-controlled tech development, and open-source software movements.
• Real-World Community Networks: Use local labor councils, mutual aid networks, and independent media to replace digital dependency.
• Boycott Silicon Valley Services: Encourage mass unsubscriptions from cloud services, ad-driven apps, and corporate-backed digital platforms.

2. Pressure on Governments & Labor Unions

• Nationalize Big Tech: Demand that Silicon Valley platforms be turned into public utilities with democratic worker and user control.
• Enforce Digital Labor Protections: Push for laws protecting gig workers, banning AI exploitation, and ensuring fair wages for online creators.
• Tech Worker Unionization: Support the expansion of organized labor into software development, content moderation, and digital gig work.

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Potential Challenges & Counteractions

1. Big Tech Retention Tactics

• Shadowbanning & Censorship: Platforms may throttle discussions—use encrypted messengers, forums, and real-world meetups to coordinate.
• Retention Tricks: They will push "mental health breaks" instead of deletions—reinforce mass action as a collective, not individual, strike.

2. Media Backlash

• Corporate media will frame the exodus as "paranoia" or "harmful to democracy"—counter with worker-led alternative media campaigns.

3. Internal Fragmentation

• Some users may only delete some accounts—stress the importance of full disengagement to maximize economic impact.

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Impact Goals

• Ad revenue collapse & investor panic as engagement plummets.
• Increased organizing power as people redirect energy from social media to labor struggles.
• Stronger anti-capitalist consciousness among Millennials & Zoomers, turning them towards unionization, mutual aid, and direct action.

This could be the first digital general strike against corporate control. Want to add specific union actions or political statements to tie it to postal workers and other labor struggles?

Kayfabe Capitalism: What the Wrestling Territories Reveal About the Libertarian Fantasy

American libertarianism promises that free markets, left alone by the state, produce competition, innovation, and voluntary cooperation. Strip away regulation and let private actors order their own affairs, the theory goes, and coercion withers because no one can force anyone into anything. The professional wrestling territories were about as close to a real-world test of that theory as this country has ever run. The state barely noticed the business existed. A private body, the National Wrestling Alliance, governed it. Deals were struck on handshakes and honor. And what emerged was not competition. It was a cartel enforced by violence, which collapsed into a monopoly, with the workers holding no leverage at any point along the way.

That is the whole argument, and the market only ever needed three moves of doom to reach the finish: 

1. private governance became a coercive cartel, 
2. the cartel gave way to monopoly rather than competition, 
3. and labor was powerless under both. 

Same sequence every time, same guy going over. Sorting the history this way, instead of piling up every ugly thing that ever happened in a locker room, is what makes the case hold.

1. Private governance becomes a cartel, and the cartel runs on coercion

The NWA did not referee competition. It suppressed it. Member promoters carved the country into exclusive territories and agreed not to poach each other's talent or run each other's towns. That is not a free market. It is a cartel, the wrestling equivalent of OPEC dividing up oil fields, and cartels have a permanent problem: every member has an incentive to cheat, so something has to punish defectors.

In a system with functioning courts, you enforce agreements with contracts. The territories could not do that, because the whole business ran in a legal grey zone and much of what it was enforcing would never survive daylight. So enforcement went private and extralegal. Promoters who crossed a territorial line or challenged the NWA got blackballed, and the wrestlers who worked for them got blacklisted right alongside, cut off from the only employers in the trade. When ostracism was not enough, there was muscle. Promoters kept enforcers, the "office boys," to hand out beatings and career-ending "accidents" to anyone who tried to jump territories or start a promotion of their own. The 1936 Dick Shikat double-cross, where a wrestler shot on his opponent and took a title for real, ended up in court and briefly exposed how scripted and controlled the whole thing actually was. The system's response to a worker going off-script was not market discipline. It was retaliation.

A libertarian has two ready answers here, and both need to be met head-on. The first: blackballing is just freedom of association, nobody is obligated to book you. Fine, in isolation. But when an entire industry's employers act as one bloc to shut a person out of every job in the trade, "freedom of association" becomes a mechanism of collective coercion no matter how voluntary each individual choice looks. The second answer: the leg-breaking was already illegal, so this is a failure of the state to enforce the law, not a failure of the free market. That objection gives away the game. The territories are what private ordering actually looks like when the state steps back. Remove effective oversight and the vacuum does not stay empty. Private power fills it, and private power writes its rules in whatever currency it has, which in wrestling meant blacklists and broken bones. The libertarian dream is a world governed by private actors instead of the state. Wrestling ran that experiment, and the private governance was more arbitrary and less accountable than any state agency.

2. The cartel collapses into monopoly, not competition

The territorial cartel was unstable, and libertarians are right that it could not last. Where the theory fails is in what came next. A free market is supposed to break a cartel by opening it up to competition. Wrestling's cartel broke open into a monopoly.

Vince McMahon did not win by building a better product and letting fans choose in a fair fight. He won by capturing distribution and raiding rosters that had no legal protection. In 1984, on the day the business still calls Black Saturday, he bought Georgia Championship Wrestling out from under the NWA and seized its national cable slot on WTBS, blindsiding everyone. He gutted Bill Watts's Mid-South by luring away its draws, the Junkyard Dog chief among them, and Watts eventually had to sell. He stripped talent from promotion after promotion, and the promoters he raided had no recourse, because the entire system had been built to operate outside the law they might otherwise have appealed to. Then he used cable television to put his product in every market at once, something no regional promoter could match.

Here the libertarian says: that is competition working, McMahon out-innovated dinosaurs. But look at the actual arc. It runs cartel to monopoly and skips the competitive equilibrium the theory promises entirely. The decisive advantages were not a better wrestling product. They were the capture of a new distribution technology and the ability to poach from rivals who could not sue him because the whole trade was extralegal. The market never produced many buyers competing on merit. It produced one dominant buyer who had absorbed or destroyed the rest. Concentrated private power did not check itself. It compounded.

3. Under both structures, labor holds no leverage

This is the through-line, and it is where the argument pays off. Whether the industry was a cartel or a monopoly, the person with no power was always the worker.

The territory era at least gave wrestlers several employers to play against each other. A man could leave one promotion for another and take his drawing power with him. Consolidation killed that. When McMahon absorbed the competition, he became something close to the single buyer of high-level wrestling labor in the country, and a single buyer sets the terms. The instrument was the independent-contractor classification, and it persists in WWE to this day. Wrestlers work full schedules under non-compete clauses, cover their own travel and medical costs, and are still called contractors rather than employees. That label does specific work: it denies them healthcare despite catastrophic injury rates, it blocks them from unionizing because contractors have no collective-bargaining rights, and it leaves them paid only when booked, so an injury or a fall from favor means no income.

When workers tried to change this, the structure crushed them. In the 1980s Jesse Ventura attempted to organize a wrestlers' union, and by his own account Hulk Hogan reported the effort to McMahon, who shut it down. One worker informing on another to the boss is exactly what you would expect in a labor market with no protections and no solidarity infrastructure, where the rational move for a favored star is to protect his own standing.

The deaths belong here, not in some separate catalog of gore, because they are the cost of a labor system with no safety floor and no worker power to demand one. Eddie Guerrero died at 38 of heart failure after years of the substance abuse the schedule and the injuries fed. Chris Benoit's murder-suicide was later tied to severe CTE from repeated concussions, and only after that did WWE adopt a real concussion protocol, decades late. In an industry with no union, no health coverage, and no independent safety authority, wrestlers were disposable by design. That is not a series of individual tragedies. It is what a monopsony with no regulatory floor does to the bodies it employs.

What the territories actually prove

The honest version of this argument is not that libertarianism logically requires cartels, coercion, and dead wrestlers. It is that when you approximate libertarian conditions in the real world, minimal state, private ordering, voluntary agreements, this is the empirical tendency you get. Private power rushes into the space the state vacates, and it answers to no one. Competition does not discipline it, because the strongest actors have every incentive and every means to suppress competition rather than submit to it. Coercion does not disappear, it privatizes, and private coercion comes with no due process, no appeal, and no vote.

Wrestling calls its maintained fictions kayfabe, the illusion presented as real. The free market in the territories was itself a work. The performance was competition and voluntary exchange. The finish, every time, was concentrated power and a worker with no leverage taking the fall. Without oversight and without the countervailing power of organized labor, the free market is just another rigged match, and everyone in the business knows who is going over before the bell rings. 

Altered States: The Barnes Foundation

The Dead Guy explains why he takes issue with the lack accessibility for low Income residents to the Barnes Collection and other Philadelphia public institutions.

http://youtu.be/5we6ZItTy28

From the Cave to Cyberspace: The Evolution of the Human Element in Visual Art

When we consider the creative capacities of mankind, specifically in terms of visual art, we should typically start with the artists and artisans themselves. Interestingly enough the more one examines art and art history, the more one begin to notice that the further back we delve into the emergence of the creative human being, the more anonymous the individual artist becomes. Prehistoric artwork such as The Lascaux cave, The Venus of Willendorf and countless other ruins and monoliths from around the world were created by many talented artists and artisans, yet a majority of them remain anonymous. Yet this is not surprising if we look at the role, or specifically the lack thereof, of the individual in early human societies. 

As we track the emergence of the creative human being we begin to see a trend where artists far and wide begin to acquire ever more autonomy and status within the context of more complex societies. Consequently, as the autonomy of the artist has grown it begins to fundamentally alter the artist’s relationship with conventional society. Evolving from one that, at one time, was so completely integrated that it rendered the artist essentially anonymous; while slowly developed into one that is so independent it then allowed the artist to represent what could be the paramount expression of individuality in western society. 

This I believe has transformed, and fundamentally altered, the dynamic regarding how an artist approaches their work, and subsequently, how the artist interacts with their audience. It is this fundamental shift in the function of the artist in society which has inevitably generated extreme hostility from the public for the self-aggrandizing nature of the contemporary art world. Perpetuating a profoundly incomplete view of what means to be an individual, and subsequently, what it means to be an artist.

Unfortunately western societies have evolved to view the individual, and particularly the artist, as being the antithesis of the collective within society, denying that the artist is inevitably bound, even in the abstract, to the collective through the language and symbols of human communication. What I mean by this is that artists, in order to be a truly great artist, must utilize our collective accumulated knowledge in order to thoroughly explore a vast amount of different themes and ideas, while utilizing our collective language of visual archetypes and symbol in order to engage mankind on the deepest level, the subconscious. In otherworld: 

“The individual is not an exception to the norm. He carries within himself and embodies the accumulated knowledge, skills and capacities of the collective. The individual is the conscious fount of the accumulated knowledge and experience of the collective… What is exceptional is the freedom and courage with which he explores, creates, invents, recombines and expresses the collective endowment in original ways.”  ~ WAAS (World Academy of Art and Science)

It is due to a chronic misunderstanding of what creativity actually is, which allows us to pervert the fundamental function of artistic creativity within our society. By designating creativity as a ‘skill’ or ‘talent’ possessed by a select few member of our society, we undermine the innate, and essential, creative abilities of the rest of the population. Inevitably this has allowed us to perpetuate an idea of creativity, the artist and the individual, which is not only incomplete but fundamentally flawed at its foundation. This distorted societal concept of creativity is incredibly pervasive, especially when it comes to the the way in which we approach fostering creativity within our society. And the artists themselves are far from innocent bystander in the persistence of such misleading ideas. 

Due to the increased autonomy of the artist within our culture, artists have moved further to the fringes of society, leading many artists into the blind alley of conceptualism, which has become increasingly misanthropic and nihilistic in their relationship with society in general; in its continued assault on the audience with vague concepts, meant to shock and confuse rather than communicate or engage humanity on a deeper collective level. The general public, who the contemporary artist has grown to view as Philistine, has developed an increasingly contemptuous attitude towards these inside jokes, if one could even call them that, littering the pretentious postmodernism of contemporary galleries, while only the affluent, not society at large, continue to perpetuate these dead art movements.

In this age of connectivity there is no excuse for artists to be so detached and condescending in their interactions with the audience. As we move into a new era of human civilization the art world, just like the society around us, will experience some unprecedented changes, particularly when it comes to how artists engage and interact with their audience. Audiences have traditionally viewed art only within the narrow confines of the sterile venues of the contemporary museums, which have become tiresome and lack the crucial engagement that our society is looking for.  

One specific aspect of art, which the audience has been excluded from largely throughout history, is the creative process itself, which would explain the overall societal lack of understanding and appreciation for the creative process in general. What I mean by this is in a traditional gallery setting the audience only gets to experience the final ‘masterpiece’. In seeing only the final work in a state of perceived perfection it helps to foster a misconception that artists are exceptionally gifted at creating forms which are prefect. And that, quite honestly, simply isn’t true. 

For far too long it has been considered taboo for artists to share their own creative process, out of an unsubstantiated fear that it will cheapen the work. These machinations, especially for the legions of contemporary conceptual artists allow artists to put more time in creating insincere concepts meant simply to shock and confuse, rather than genuine living artifacts. This idea that simply sharing your creative process with someone else could cheapen your work is a ploy, one meant to shroud the fundamental lack of vision with in the contemporary art world.  

Fortunately, we are begin to see a shift within the underground arts, which is helping counter this pervasive culture within the art world, and it is taking place before our very eyes online, throughout the numerous social networking sites that populate the internet. More and more artists are sharing the magic of their creativity with their fans and younger artists. These fully interactive artists are using numerous hashtags, which has helped to create, perhaps unknowingly, huge repositories of creativity in progress. Hashtags such as #creativity, #newartwork, and #WIP (work in progress) allow fans and artists access to a massive accumulation of documented creativity, incidentally helping to foster within others a genuine appreciation for creativity, and the arts, through direct observation. Not to mention a system of hashtags being used to create digital art groups of global artists sharing their work with each other. 

This new paradigm within the art world has many advocates throughout the social media world. Artist like Chet Zar have inspired hundreds of artists worldwide to share their artwork every Friday night with a hashtag he created (#fridaynightartdorks).  Unfortunately, many of these artist have been continuously marginalized and relegated to the scene of underground ‘lowbrow’/surrealism, which has typically been viewed as ‘illustration’ or  ‘too commercial’ to be high art, rather than celebrated for being the contemporary visionaries that they truly are. 

Artists like Chet Zar, Buddy Nestor and myself, love sharing the process of our work, not because we think we have to, but because we want to. The creative process, or what Arthur Keostler referred to as the ‘Act of Creativity’, not just the finished product, is precisely what fuels our own creativity. We enjoy direct interaction with our fans, and other artists, which is driven by a collective fascination with the creative process in general, which becomes a common bond. We are, as Chet had put it an interview with Juxtapoz Magizine, ‘process junkies’.  

There are also a growing number of artists whom also find joy in participating in ‘live’ art sessions around the world. Artists such as Guy Atchinson, Michele Wortman, Jon Clue, Chris Dingwell and Alex and Allyson Grey can be found painting live at galleries, events such as Burning Man or a number of the art/tattoo conventions. Painting without haste and taking time to speak to the many of the onlookers as they actively reveal the equally captivating process of their work. These are the artist who are engaging people on a very human level, forging new ways to creatively engage their audience with openness and sincerity.  

We must remember that just because artists tend to have a greater propensity for creativity it doesn’t mean they are the only ones whom possess such 'skills'. Furthermore, those in the contemporary art world, may not even possess any kind of exceptional mastership of such creative capacities; they might just be well versed in the conceptual theology of bullshit. And this is the poisoned pill that many accredited art schools sell to unsuspecting students.  

Edward De Bono once said that, “Far too many people believe that creativity is just being different. Being different for the sake of being different may attract attention but that is not sufficient value. True creativity must deliver real value.” The problem with the post-modern conceptual art movement is that it, even though it may deliver original ideas and concepts, it fails miserably at delivering value, except on a very superficial level to the affluent people that buy it, not for its value, but its ability to exemplify a privileged status.  

Artists are gifted people but not because they're simply creative. They are gifted because of a compulsion to create, refine and eventually deliver the imaginative, and visionary, realms in which they dwell; creatively. Art is an artifact, in the most beautiful sense. By using creativity and communication, an artist navigates through a window within what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious; at a specific time and place with the accumulated lexicon of symbolic language, and imagery, which allows the emergence of ever more novel forms. Therefore art is an artifact in the most fundamental sense, since it carries with it a specific collective history, language, and culture from which it was produced, preserving a living vestige to the society at large. And it is this which makes art a truly magical phenomena.

Dear Friends: My Letter of Membership to the Religious Society of Friends

Dear Friends,

 I’ve been attending meeting now for a little over a year, and I would like to formally become a member of the Byberry Friends. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been acutely aware of my own personal spiritual nature, and have spent my time, mostly as an artist, attempting to explore and express it though a visual medium. After attending meeting for over a year I feel that the Religious Society of Friends is the only religious organization that has thoroughly resonated with me on both a personal and spiritual level enough to pursue membership.

 I feel that my attendance at the local Byberry Meeting has given me a safe and quite place to reflect on my inner thoughts, allowing me to center my spiritual being in a vast and captivating universe. I feel that the Religious Society of Friends has also expanded my social conscience by, not only making me more aware of my fellow (hu)man, but also the social injustice that surrounds me, while providing me many avenues to address such issues. The Society’s dedication to social justice, peace, and equality is something that I would be honored to be associated with.

 I find the history of the Quakers, especially its art history, extremely fascinating, rich, engaging and something that I would love to continue to learn more about. As an artist, activist, feminist, and humanist I believe that the Religious Society of Friends best reflects my personal and spiritual sensibilities. As one of the younger attendees of the meeting I would like to contribute whatever I can to help continue the compassionate and loving spirit that I have encountered in my attendance at Byberry Friends Meeting.

 I would also love to share my love, not only for the arts, but creativity in general, in order to help nurture the growing art community within the Religious Society of Friends, specifically by participating more directly with
The Fellowship of Quakers in the Arts. My ministry, as a member of the Society of Friends, would be sharing my passion for the arts and human creativity, specifically regarding how creativity relates to the cathartic expression of our inner human experience. I would like to help foster within others, both Quakers and Non-Quakers, the idea that creativity is an innate and universal aspect of mankind, while also examining how creative expression can highlight the infinite possibilities of humankind. By reexamine what creativity actually is, through creative play, perhaps we can enhance our understanding of the creative power behind the natural world, which is responsible for building the human organism through the creative process of evolution, in order to better understand our role on this planet as wholly evolved, and creative, beings.

 Thank You For Your Time And Consideration.

Respectfully,
Chuck Angeline

EQAT PNC Mountaintop Removal protest: Fasting Preperation Day 1

I'm joining the environmental group EQAT (Earth Quaker Action Team) eqat.org for a 40 day fast. each individual can fast as long as they want. I will be fasting for one day on Easter Sunday.


for information visit: eqat.org

An update on my experience as a Quaker (Thus Far)

I Haven't been able to update my blog with new content lately since I'll be getting married in two month. So I decided to make this Vlog to share with the rest of the Psychedelic Ministry of the Dead.

The Civics of Jesus

Christ in the Wilderness (1872)

Ivan Kramskoy

The Civics of Jesus  

by Chuck Angeline

I often think about how the compassionate and loving message of Jesus, presented quite thoroughly in the Gospels, tends to sink into the background as the hateful bigotry of some of the more extreme Christian sects takes center stage. I imagine that this is quite a frequent meditation amongst my fellow Quakers, and is not only one that I continue to be confronted by, but one I often find extremely troubling. This carnival of hatred, which has attracted so many willfully ignorant people into its horrendously fanatical tent show, is both extremely frightening and disheartening. And if that isn't bad enough there are certain individual, within some of highest levels of the United States congress, that consistently attempt to legislate such acts of ignorance and bigotry. These Dominionists will stop at nothing to undermine, not only the rule of law, but even the compassionate message of Jesus’ himself, in order to establish an outdated and downright horrific theocratic society, of, for and by the Roman Empire. A society rigidly molded in the image of Constantine the Great, rather than the benevolence of Jesus of Nazareth.

As a Quaker I don’t put much stock in Lent, or any other Christian holiday authorized by catholic liturgy for that matter, since friends tend to regard every day is a Holy(day). But I invite you, whether theist or secular, to reflect on those in history that have fought against similar exploitations, perpetrated against (hu)mankind, by considering how the story of Jesus, whether fictional or not, had played a prominent role in their fight. Some of you might not be aware that Abolitionism, The Civil Rights Movement and Women’s suffrage all had influential leaders and allies that were provoked by their particular religious faith to fight for the rights and privileges of their fellow men and women.

Also, Let us not forget how Jesus fought back, not only against the Roman Empire, but also against the Jewish Rabbis in his community. There are many incidents within the gospels where the Rabbis of the community continuously undermined the best interests of the meek and the poor, in order to accommodate the oppressors of the Jewish people. Jesus was condemned by the Roman Empire, and the rabbinical hierarchy, for questioning the status quo in his attempt to provide another avenue of salvation for the commoner. Not though the crucifixion, which is seen by many Christians as the sacrifice which absolved mankind of their sins, but redemption through the unwavering desire for the complete emancipation of mind, body and soul for each and every human being! 

Recovering from Libertarianism: A Discussion w/Sam Seder (via The Majority Report Podcast)

I took some time last week to call into The Majority Report Podcast to discuss my recovery from Libertarianism with Sam Seder. I've been listening to the show for almost a year now after being drawn in by a number of videos, posted by Sam Seder on youtube.com, where he debated with self-identify Libertarians. Although many of the Majority Report Libertarian listeners claim that Sam is ‘belittling’ and patronizing Libertarians he has very thoroughly exposed the holes in the idealism that permeates libertarian talking points. After becoming a Quaker I began to look at the philosophy of Libertarianism much more closely and with Sam’s help I began to see the flaws within the privileged bliss of such an idealistic philosophy.

 At the end of our conversation Sam told me that he hopes I call back and I plan on it.

 Enjoy. ;)

--From the Majority Report, live M-F 12 noon EST and via daily podcast at http://Majority.FM:--




BTW, here are some links to videos from the Majority Report podcast regarding Libertarianism:

An Open Challenge To Libertarians

Libertarian Caller Answers Our Challenge!

How to Debunk a Libertarian: Let Them Talk

Libertarian Caller Answers Challenge...?

Libertarians: Sam Reiterates His Open Challenge

Sam Seder vs. Libertarian Caller

Challenge to Libertarians: Can Anyone Defend Libertarian Principles?

How Would Libertarians Deal with Lead Poisoning?

Libertarian Argues Against Obamacare, Says You Should Diagnose Your Own Illnesses

~ Dead  Guy

The Child Left Behind: Educating our Children out of their Creativity

by Chuck Angeline

(Originally published on the Not As Lazy As You Think blog)

As a creative person living in America, which has seemingly become a society that squashes creativity by camouflaging indoctrination as education, it baffles my mind that people are bewildered as to how our country arrived at its current state of anti intellectualism and creative decay. It seems to me that we have built an entire education system predicated on good grades and the regurgitation of knowledge, which, if you've ever watched HBO's Assume The Position with Robert Wuhl, you know that most of what is taught as American history is at best sensationalized and at worst wholly fictional.

The problem with creativity in America is that most people don't know what creativity is. Creativity is usually defined as: the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc. Sir Ken Robinson, who has spent a great deal of time pointing out the short comings of an outdated educational system, defines it simply as, “the process of having original ideas that have value.” The common misconception is that creativity is localized, that it only exists in certain “gifted” people. The reason we have this misconception is because our educational system isolates creative thinking to the humanities, and fails to see that creativity is utilized in all schools of thought. Any individual at, or striving toward, the pinnacle of his discipline must be an innovator. They must create original ideas in order to evolve within their disciple and within their society.

We've indoctrinated people to think that only some people are creative, and that “I'm not one of them.”. It breaks my heart when I'm drawing out in a bar and someone tells me they can't draw, or that they use to draw but now they can only draw stick figures, and that, “You’re very talented”. Usually I'll respond that what they perceive as “talent” is nothing more than the ability to let go. The most important part of the creative process is taking chances. When I draw I take a chance, I experiment by trying something new and unknown. This is a process that comes naturally to a child. Children aren't afraid to take chances, they're not afraid of being “wrong”, because the concept of right or wrong does not exists in their pure state of enchantment.

In psychology there is a state of being called the “Oceanic Feeling”. This idea came to fruition during a correspondence between Sigmund Freud and Romain Rolland. After reading The Future of an Illusion Romain Rolland wrote to Freud: "By religious feeling, what I mean—altogether independently of any dogma, any Credo, any organization of the Church, any Holy Scripture, any hope for personal salvation, etc.—the simple and direct fact of a feeling of 'the eternal' (which may very well not be eternal, but simply without perceptible limits, and as if oceanic).

This feeling is in truth subjective in nature. It is a contact." Rolland believed that this feeling was the root of all religious energy.

I would like to expand on Rolland’s idea by purposing that many of our external spiritual practices may be an attempt to fill the void that the “oceanic feeling”, which we possessed as children, once filled. And it is this specific sensation, which Rolland described as, “an indissoluble bond, of being one with the external world as a whole” which may motivate many of our spiritual practices. I would also speculate that what may make artists unique is their ease at reconnecting with the purity of this spiritual state of consciousness, allowing them to commune with something wholly unknown and possibly eternal. This may be why visual artists feel compelled to draw, writers write poetry, and religious folk pray and attend church. Likewise, as appreciators of art we may be connecting with this feeling whenever we attend a gallery, read a book or watch a film. The methodology may be different but the emotional and spiritual content may very well be the same.

As a result, Freud mentions this correspondence in his book Civilization and Its Discontents, and postulated that this oceanic feeling may dwell within in the primitive ego and, as a result of assimilation; it inevitably fades to a "shrunken residue" as a child is indoctrinated to accept consensus reality. The development of the ego is necessary for a child, but I think the western tendency to overvalue the ego has lead the west to lose touch with the unconscious inner world, which is just as important. So it is possible that practicing any spiritual discipline be that drawing, writing, meditation or prayer, may aid in balancing these two worlds. Our insistence on teaching children to pass the standardized tests such as those erected by “No Child Left Behind” have superseded any space given for such pursuits and allowed creative outlets within our school system to disappear like rain forests, and as a result have robbed the children of this great nation of essential outlets for their inner existence.

I guess you could say I'm a optimist because I feel that everyone can be creative, but this is not an opinion this is a fact. We know that everyone at some point in their life has drawn, sang, danced or acted. The problem is that we've been indoctrinating people to believe that if you can't do something exceptionally well then you shouldn't do it at all. All children draw, color, sing and dance but as they grow up we steer them away from these activities by stigmatizing them with the idea of the starving artist. We narrow a child's focus by preparing them to direct all of their energy toward a career, more specifically a financially stable career, without realizing that the creative skills someone is taught in the arts can be applied to other disciplines as well. Academics and standardized testing often do little to teach a child to think outside the box and tend to terrify them into confining themselves within said box.

In his now famous TED talks Robinson told the stories about Gillian Lynne, a choreographer who is famous for "Cats," and "Phantom of the Opera", and a firefighter who transcended his teachers dissuasion. In the first story Lynne explained an experience in which her school thought she had a learning disability because she couldn't sit still in class. Thankfully the doctor that her mother took her to realized that she couldn't sit still because she wanted to dance, and that the action of moving actually helped her think. That was in the 40's, and Robinson pointed out that in this current educational climate a child in Lynn's shoes would probably be diagnosed with A.D.D. The story of the firefighter is about a similar adversity, in this case the firefighter already knew what he wanted to do with his life, but a teacher told him that he was throwing his life away if that was what he chose to do with it. The firefighter went on to tell Robinson, during a book signing, that 6 months ago he saved that teacher and his wife from a car wreck, and stated that, “I think he thinks better of me now.”

These stories are the precursors to how our current educational system has descended into a banal and outdated system, that is slowly becoming irrelevant. If a school can't teach our children to read, rationalize, and think creatively, while at the same time helping them to discover their true talents, not the ones we try to map on to them, then what good are they? Robinson said that “Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.”, This statement seems to reiterate the fear that on our current course, creativity and innovation, will slowly become a residue in this culture, something that we use to possess but has now faded away; a residual effect of a once prosperous and advanced country. It seems as though, even though we may have good teachers out there, that the system is set up in a way to promote failure by encouraging people to go to college for all the wrong reasons. One of which, ranked highest in a recent poll, was to make a lot of money. So now we have young adults going to college, selecting majors that don't emphasize their talents, and leaving our country with more disenfranchised students becoming dropouts, unemployed with a 50,000 dollar bachelor's degree or unfulfilled by a job they may excel at, but which fails to feed their passions in life.

We can keep doing the same thing over and over again, reform after reform, or we can create a new model, a new paradigm, that encourages people to discover their talents and passions, before they attend college. I've always found it quite disconcerting that our system seems to have no payout until you pay in, but, hey, I guess that's America. What I mean by that is, to a degree, it seems as though primary schools are more occupied with getting students ready for college then getting them ready for life, and for good reason. Let's face it, with the price we pay with degree inflation, you have to start as early as possible, right? We all know by now an Associate degree is worthless, and a Bachelor's is becoming worthless, it’s really just a matter of time, as is always the case with inflation. It’s as though we've created a system that digs its own grave on a day to day basis by applying ideologies about education that are over 200 years old. Is this what this country has become? Nothing more than a banal unoriginal landscape of conformity built on perpetuating a model of unquestioned ideas and ideologies, which prevents any real paradigm shift from ever taking place? Or have we just lost focus, and don't give a shit anymore?

Mind the Light and it Shall Light the Way

I am an artist who enjoys dabbling in the visionary realm of the psychedelic experience.  It has undoubtedly fostered a healthy spiritual nature within me and my work. With my influences consisting of visionaries such as Wassily Kandinsky, Joan Miro, Andre Masson, Keith Haring and Alex Grey this was bound to happen, but joining an actual religious organization was something I had never imagined. Besides my love for art, I grew up cherishing stand-up comedy. In High School I actually wanted to be a stand-up comedian, but lacked the writing skill and dedication to pursue it with the passion, which I now have for fine art. Being a fan of Bill Hicks and George Carlin has undoubtedly fostered a skepticism of religion within me, but I had never become cynical enough to throw in the towel and become an avowed atheist.

There has always been a spiritual affinity embedded in my nature, even before my use of psychedelic substances. This has grow substantially over the years with my exposure to the writings of Carl Jung, Terence McKenna and Timothy Leary thought stoner rock legends Tool. This exposure lead me toward a personal philosophy that became more mystical and shamanic, but still rooted in the appreciation of the underlying message of Jesus, revealed most effectively, I thought, by the mystical Christians known as the Gnostics.

Shamanism and Gnosticism are wonderful philosophies, but they both possess some limitations. First of all there are no shamanic/gnostic communities in the great state of Pennsylvania. Secondly, some of the mythologies, particularly within Gnosticism, I found extremely difficult to wrap my head around. Also, much of the history and knowledge of these two mystical groups has be either destroyed, or severely distorted by western minds. The Catholic Church has a very celebrated history of deeming Gnosticism as heretical, and therefore destroying any living documents they could get their hands on. Shamanism on the other hand has been practiced by as bpredominately preliterate indigenous people from around the world, leaving any documentation coming from the pen of westerners, leading many towards a the type of ‘Plastic Shamanism’ that has become fissionable amongst new agers.

One community that I did find, which resonated with my personal spirituality for quite some time, was The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, but it also had its limitations. First of all, COSM relocated from a small spot in Chelsea New York City, all the way to a 40 acre plot of land in Wappinger Falls in Upstate New York. I’ve been to both sites quite a few times in the last 7 years, but a 3 hour drive isn’t financially feasible, or environmentally responsible. Alex and Allyson Grey are wonderful people, who I hope to work with in the future as my artwork grows, but there were a few things about the congregation that gathered, not the Grey’s themselves, which I had a hard time identify with. First, there seemed to be a heavy contingency of what can only be referred to as evangelical vegans. I have no problem with people that choose to be vegan, in fact I commend them for doing what they do, and the sacrifices that they choose to make. My problem is those individuals that proselytize why veganism is good, and why non-vegans are inertly flawed and ignorant. Secondly, I also didn’t appreciate the dirty look directed at my girlfriend simply for wearing leather. The self-righteous judgment that I experience from some of those which made the pilgrimage to COSM seemed disingenuous, and also counter intuitive, to the culture that I believe Alex and his wife Allyson intend to foster. Also, I’m not a big fan of the whole rave atmosphere, coupled with the flightiness of some of the congregants that seem to be there solely for a party, rather than genuine self-reflection. It may work for those individuals, but it is a particular aspect of western culture that I have grown to view as both fruitless and unenlightened.

Soon Thereafter, I met a beautiful redhead, and self-proclaimed atheist, which I had begun dating. Little did I know that she was about to take me on spiritual journey of a lifetime. Through our relationship we began to sort out our spiritual ideals and come to a more focused idea of what we each were spiritually. We both came to the conclusion that we both believed in the divinity within all living beings. We also both stood in awe, not of the idea of God, handed down from generation to generation, but the awesome power of the Cosmos. A Cosmos that spawned not only us, but also the exponentially growing potential generated by the human brain, making it possible to conceive of such things as science, art and philosophy.

Eventually, in order to find some kind of community, I began rummaging the internet trying to locate any local art communities. I began to follow Chet Zar’s twitter feed after finding out that he had started a very unconventional art group with the hashtag #FridayNightArtDorks. I was not only familiar with Chet’s artwork, but also his collaborations on music videos with the band Tool, and also his close friendship with Alex and Allyson Grey. After participating for about a month I was sold on his idea and decided to approach him about bring his idea to Facebook. He responded with an emphatic “Do it!” and I got to work. Within 6 months the group on facebook quickly grew to include over 300 artists from around the world, most of which also seem to want to quench a thirst they had for a close-knit art community. I’ve since started organizing events with some of the other artists out in public, in order to foster and encourage a creative atmosphere with as many artists as possible, which has also been a big success.

Two year later, I find myself in the most loving and engaging relationship I’ve ever had, with a brilliant woman now attending Bryn Mawr College; one of the most esteemed woman’s liberal arts school in the country. As a Result, we have both begun to learn the very rich Quaker history of her school, increasingly becoming intrigued by those little known people called ‘the Quakers’. The more she told me the more I wanted to find out. I figured our local meetinghouse would be the best place to start, which is conveniently within walking distance from where we live. I admit I procrastinated for some time, since it difficult for me to not sleep in on the weekend, but eventually I made it to the meeting house and I have every intention to keep going back.

With only a few meeting under my belt I’ve begun to find many similarities between the Religious Society of Friends and many of the more dedicated, spiritually minded, individuals that I’ve meet from my trips to the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. The Quakers, much like the Grey’s themselves, have a very open and compassionate disposition, which makes one feel very welcomed and at home. The Religious Society of Friends also reflects the same idea of what Alex refers to as ‘unorganized religion’. Thought the Society of Friends has a somewhat peculiar history with art, one which once viewed the arts as ‘self-indulgent’, due to their pragmatic approach to the spirit they have begun to accept the arts over the last century. The Quakers now recognize the arts as a legitimate tool for the expression of spirit, which I think showcases their ability to evolve as a community. It is precisely this ability to grow and foster new ideas, specifically in regards to the role of spirit and creativity in their own community, which has allowed me to recognize they’re work as a testament of spirit, in and of itself. Because of this I believe that I can make a more substantial and immediate impact with the Society of Friends as their artistic community continues to grow. As for the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, which already has two colossal visionaries at the helm, I wish them all the luck in fostering the community they’ve envisioned, and I hope that I, and the rest of my new friends (Quakers), can collaborate with them creatively in the future. 

Namaste
DeadGuy Chuck (the Psychedelic Quaker)

An Examination of Andre Masson’s In the Tower of Sleep

by Chuck Angeline

Within any great work of art lives a timeless spirit, enabling the work to be, not only a manifestation of the artist, but also an expression of the cultural context in which it is created. A majority of Masson’s work, along with his contemporaries, was born out of the upheaval of war and conflict that had plagued Europe and the rest of the Western world since the inception of the industrial revolution. Europe was no stranger to long draw out wars, and America had rapidly become a notable contributor to the theatre of western imperialism. With the help of McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt, America had expanded its power throughout North America, with a clarion call for Manifest Destiny and a “Big Stick” foreign policy. With western imperialism in full swing it was just a matter of time before Europe, and the kindling that was “Western Civilization”, would be engulfed in not one but two world wars. 

The period of time between the end of World War I and the beginning of World War II, referred to as the Interwar Years (1919-1938), also consist of a creative explosion throughout Europe as artists, many of which had experienced the devastating effects of the First World War, in one way or another, began to collaborate creatively. In the wake of War many anti-bourgeois movements, such as Dada and Surrealism, would eventually become some of the most influential and radical art movements in Europe, while condemning the bourgeois nationalist culture and its capitalistic ideologies, which they believed fueled the profiteering that lead to total war. 

Meanwhile, the wealth of information gained from soldiers regarding the intense emotional stress they had endured led to leaps and bounds being made in the field of Psychology. The progress that would be made, specifically by Sigmund Freud and Carl G. Jung, inadvertently influenced a majority of visual and literary artists in Europe, specifically the Surrealists, yet would take almost 20 years to be translated from German. Never the less, the writings of these two psychologists would reach many artists and become the fuel that would stoke the fire of discontent, which eventually led many artists towards La Révolution surréaliste (The Surrealist Revolution). 

During the interwar period many Europeans, gripped by the devastation of the First World, had trouble coping with such upheaval. Meanwhile, artists across the European continent began sublimating their pain and expressing their nightmares through act of creativity. The psychological effects of war on the human psyche were self-evident in many of the artists’ work, which lead to a notable period in art that would serve as a constant reminder of Europe’s capacity for self-destruction. The shellshock of war that engulfed Europe during the first half of the 20th century would be preserved in iconic works, most notably Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, Salvador Dali’s Face of War, Max Ernst’s Europe after the Rain I & II and Andre Masson’s In the Tower of Sleep. 

Andre Masson was also no stranger to the ill effects of war, after volunteering for duty in World War I. In April of 1917 Masson took part in the Chemin des Dames offensive, in which, on the first day of combat alone, the French army suffered over 40,000 casualties and lost 150 tanks. During the offensive Masson suffered a severe chest wound, accounts of which vary, but most seem to agree that Masson experienced some sort of vision, which would eventually catalyze his work as an artist. With such a background in military service Masson’s work, especially In the Tower of Sleep, would display the horrors of war more aggressively than any other visual artist associated with the Surrealist movement. Although Picasso’s Guernica is arguably the most famous painting on the subject of war, it more accurately displays the immediately psychical and psychological horrors of a bombing rather than the lingering psychological aspects, such as the insomnia, anger, and hyper-vigilance induced by the nightmare and flashbacks associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which would persistently plague survivors of war, such as Masson, decades after the end of their active duty. 

Such works like Picasso’s Guernica and Dali’s Visage of War capture, essentially, the horror of war from a non-military experience, but Masson’s In the Tower of Sleep represents more accurately the totality of war. I believe that Masson’s experience of war, both on the frontlines, and in civilian life, afforded him the ability to paint a more evocative depiction of modern warfare. Being on the frontlines of World War I adds a dimension to Masson’s work and his discontent of war, to borrow a phrase from Freud, which few of the artists had the opportunity to experience. This is in no way a dismissal of the mass destruction and devastation that cities across Europe would experience with the advent of the bomber during World War II, captured best in Picasso’s Guernica. But rather an affirmation that the frontline experience in the first global war in history would add a dimension of war that is not inherent in Guernica. Specifically, the combination of 20th century technology with a 19th century fighting style of trench warfare, which coincidentally, was laced with the aroma of humanities most brutal experience with the advent of modern chemical warfare. 

Masson’s painting is a complex and chaotic work, seething with symbolic imagery and intricate motifs. The subject of the painting is an immense and powerful man composed of nothing but muscle and bone with a stomach filled with thorns and fluid that appears to be seminal flowing from the genital area that is lacking a phallus. His struggle is extremely heart wrenching, since he is caught within a harp like structure laced with teeth that will inevitably dig deeper the more the human physique struggles. Symbolically a harp can represent spiritual harmony, but within the context of this painting the harp is transformed into an obstruction to harmony. The figure indiscriminately barrels forward with his head down, contributing to the chaos in a desperate attempt to escape the burning tower. This may represent humanity’s tragic ignorance of the effects of war on the collective of mankind, who’ve become blinded by the ideologies of nationalism. 

The harp itself contains an anthropomorphic metamorphosis of a naked woman. Perhaps this is alluding to the libidinous energy brooding in the young men on the frontlines, and the perversion of these energies in the interest of nationalism. The missing phallus may also be symbolic of the desire to destroy life rather than create it, self-evident in the Third Reich’s attempt to wipe an entire civilization off the face of the earth. It could also be a symbolic representation of the palladium from Greek mythologies, which was thought to provide protection for a city. Alternately, if alluding to a personal context, the painting would also symbolize Masson’s many attempts to escape war torn areas of Europe. He had fled from France to Spain shortly after witnessing the Paris Riots. Shortly thereafter he would, as an émigré once again, leave Spain at the first signs of the Spanish Civil War. His relentless exile would eventually land him in America in order to evade the Nazis, since the Third Reich had already labeled his artwork “degenerate”, and would have persecuted his wife who was Jewish. 

Another aspect of the painting I’d like to draw your attention to is the other musical instruments in the tower, which are hidden within the background and are overshadowed by the harp in the foreground. Behind the figure there is a cello like instrument, which is also anthropomorphized with arms, that is playing its own strings with a saw, and a piano with teeth submerged in flames. All Three instruments contain within them a jagged motif, which in harp and piano seem to represent teeth, while the jagged motif in the cello serves a more decorative effect. Martin Ries, in his article André Masson: Surrealist, Survivor, Sage, decries the cello as, "A humanoid, Bosch-like musical instrument, reminiscent of the scorpion-like insects in Ophelia..." which, "tears its own strings with a saw-like bow in a sadomasochistic serenade."

One more predominant image is found in the setting of the piece, which arises directly from the title in the form of the tower. A tower can imply spiritual elevation, power and protection. But within the context of Masson’s painting the tower is engulfed in flames, reducing the fortified sanctuary to a hellish trap filled with fear and turmoil. This particular symbolism could be both a personal and transpersonal representation. On one hand it evokes Masson’s battle with insomnia, which was fueled by nightmares of war. On a transpersonal level, this same inner turmoil became a fairly common experience for any soldiers suffering from Posttraumatic stress disorder, constantly relived within the nightmares and flashbacks experienced by many veterans. If, in fact, the tower does represent the subconscious mind, it could also embody the collective subconscious of Europe, brimming with the horrifying experiences of  total war. This, seemingly, would allow the fire and destruction to represent the pain, fear and anxiety arising within the psyche, immortalized by the turmoil, which would inundate Europe during the first half of the 20th century. 

To conclude, I believe that what Masson did so well, which makes him a true master, is demonstrate his ability to create uncertainty ,with the lack of explicit detail, regarding the artifice of the work. Historically, this is perhaps a fundamental aspect when it comes to establishing a work of art, which allows it the capacity to be as captivating and enigmatic as when it was first created. What is particularly enigmatic about the work is the  colossal human figure in the painting. It appears to capture a majority of the movement within the piece, which continuously brings the viewer’s gaze back to it each time you scan over this chaotic and masterful scene. Also, much of the uncertainty within this piece appears to be emanating directly from this figure, since it is unclear whether he is an innocent bystander, fleeing the devastation behind him, or rather an active participant creating the destruction left in his wake. Perhaps it is this particular mystery that has enchants us each and every time we see it. Regardless, no matter how modernized the art of war becomes, this painting will continue to express those intangibles that makes war so utterly devastating to the human psyche.