Dadaism
You have reached the ‘Call Center for Existential Obscenities’.
Please hold.
When only the obscene can be seen, taboo fears require puritan counter-measures.
Indifference fuels the irrational and the self-absorbed.
The helpless mutates into a victim of necrotic tendencies and can no longer transmute.
– If you would like to ‘call for help’, please stay on the line. Continue reading
Stereoscopic Trans-dental meditation is …
what happens when you drill into both sides of my mouth; life bites; art bites back.
My art becomes a temper-tantrum.
Clueless observations make for subjective guess-work.
Our ethics have been perverted by environmental occlusion.
The economics of our societies lead to psycho-dental trepidation.
Requiring an anti-inflammatory, life goes on.
But MEANwhile …
The hipster takes refuge in subliminal advertising.
The avant-garde spit new life into prunes.
Fashion-martyrs have become functionally obsolescent.
The law is lewd.
The lascivious are saints.
The humanist is old enough to care less.
The artist no longer watches TV.
The muse sleeps at the office.
A senile poodle defecates in room full of bibles.
The hierophant beats the dog with a mop.
The Antichrist is a rube.
The harmonica playing flautist is flayed alive.
Death has become a born-again chocoholic.
The truly political have been prefabricated.
The conservative eats a hidden taco and revises history for attention.
The liberal’s heart bleeds out … again.
The anarchist is a racist.
The hurried are prodded to wait.
The content are forced to want.
The cultured cultivate no pearls.
The elite munch on champagne flutes and sleep naked on canapes.
The poor digest their worries.
The immigrant is a small-world-traveler.
The toothless smiles the most.
No one knows the truly retarded
… but everyone has an opinion.
Do you know me the way I know you?
Probably not; you hardly know me.
Life goes on.
And in the END …
The loved and loving wait for the departed beloved.
Art regurgitates what nature can’t stomach.
The hierophant is dead.
God save the queen.
Everyone is an American.
Daedalus was not a dadaist, nor was he a dentist.
[Subliminal Advertising: Only Dada Venduza can bring a SMiLE.]
With liberty and apathy for all! Stand united to support the right to get lost, do your own thing and not give a shit!
Free Speech is NOT a right or a privilege that needs to be granted by an authority. What are you stupid? People have mouths; they will talk anyway. We all have our opinions, so shut the fuck up. You have the right to remain silent.
Life goes on anyway, so get on with it. Don’t confuse anarchy with tyranny. Don’t confuse civility with nationalism. Don’t confuse democracy with liberty. Nationalism and anarchy are not two sides of the same coin. Historically speaking, without ‘anarchy’ there would be no USA – and by the same token without ‘nationalism’ there would have been no Nazi Germany. Happiness does not come in a can. #Winning
Stand united to champion individual differences. No grandstanding allowed. Yes, there may be no ‘I” in ‘we’, but there also ain’t no ‘us’ in it, either.
Political elections have become little more than media circuses promoting ‘groupthink’ and featuring lots of people screaming and grandstanding using the excuse of ‘competition’ to win at all costs. This phenomenon also defines ‘civil war’.
The hallmark of good leaders is the ability to be responsible for and accountable to more than just their own constituents. Any preoccupation with defining political ‘free speech’ is just an excuse for sanctioning brainwashing, censorship and fascism. As such, most candidates for political office will fail in this respect since they don’t know when and how to keep their mouths shut.
Power-mongers not welcome. Fear-mongers not welcome. Hypocrites not welcome. Politicians not welcome. Parrots not welcome. Lobbyists not welcome. Conformists not welcome. Dadaists must present identification. Loiterers ARE welcome!
Take your politics and stick them up your ass. Leave us the fuck alone! Occupy nothing. Civil disobedience is both the poison and cure for social ills. Only you can abstain from hypocrisy.
This apolitical message approved by Jay Schwartz & Dada Bloq. Do not consult your physician, healthcare provider or a member of clergy. The disestablishment of the establishment will not be televised. Watch Dada Venduza; your freedom may depend on it!
‘An Outing Of Vanity’
Forgive me vanity for I have sinned.
Those who know 12-step programs are wont to say “just be honest and tell your story” and you will be heard and accepted. OK, so here it goes:
My name is Jay Schwartz. I am a 52-year old American who lives in Greece. I’ve spent most of my life pleasing others at the expense of my inner-peace and have created havoc and chaos in my existence, and in those of some others as well. Continue reading
‘Vagaries Of The Moment’
A moment in time; a moment in the Sun; a moment with you.
Go ahead and take a moment and collect yourself.
It’s all good.
Vagaries live in the moment, along with ‘chance’. In fact, we chance upon them every now and then, but usually miss the point as we get sidetracked by the disorientating sensation.
From moment to moment, there is nothing, only transition – and transition only takes a second. You can’t live in the second, but you can live in the moment. You can ‘enjoy the moment’, but how often do we groan and grimace when told ‘it will only take a second’ or ‘I’ll be done in a second’? The ever-illusive second never comes, does it? Blink and you miss it. Living a life ‘from moment to moment’ is much more rewarding than trying to ‘hold on a for a second’.
But what of the ambitious that wait all their lives for ‘their moment’ to come?
And what of all those who find themselves ‘lost in the moment’?
Yes, yes, the vagaries of the moment; I’ll explain in a moment, it will only take a second. Well … isn’t this awkward?
Dadaism is a lot like that.
Accommodating Commodes
Oh Accommodating Commodes…
My, how you have reconciled your fate.
Conditioned to forgive and forget
so that you may be visited again by bum dignitaries
and crowned with their indignities.
Where is your individuality?
– long ago flushed out and smothered
with the loose vowels of holy rhetoric
by those up on high …
Do you take heart in knowing that at the tail end of your existence
you will have dutifully served your function …
without cracking under the excretion of your karma?
What is this righteousness you feel
in extending a policy of laissez-faire to the derrière?
Perhaps you fancy yourself a grand pedal-stool of sorts …
a throne in the company of the elite …
… a noble, yet humble, reflecting pool to moonbeams?
Oh accommodating commodes …
Alas, there is no virtue in self-repression.
And in the end, … I must confess …
you are just full of crap.
Whee! A Charade!
Life’s parade goes on in the streets below … and so each day we rise … and step back into the costume we have woven for ourselves out of the tattered pieces of our psyche and circumstances … some borrowed, some stolen, some just created from scratch to suit our prefabricated identities … and most bought on sale.
We learn to move, but we are conditioned to march. “Step quickly to the pulse of a silent beat or be trampled”, a bullhorn screams in our heads, “Left foot, right foot…”.
Most ignore the broken bodies of would be hand-walkers staining the gutters along the route. The odd streaker is quickly censored. Cut to a commercial.
Life goes on; move it or lose it …
Note: This is not ‘dada’.
“Art needs an operation”
– Tristan Tzara
And so, as a concerned Dadaist, I decided to make a film. It was a natural decision to make considering that I have this blog that no one reads (present company excluded). The film will be titled ‘Dada Venduza’. Dada, of course, is short for Dadaism and ‘Venduza’ is the Greek word for both plunger and suction cup. Together, the words suggest something that ‘sticks’ and ‘sucks’.
Explaining the title is easy; explaining the film is less so. And, like dada, what results is both art and anti-art. Moreover, it’s hard to know where to begin describing something, especially a piece of art … or a piece of raw meat … once it is constructed, deconstructed and then nailed back together again. So has gone the making of the film – still in production and evolution. As of this writing, live-action photography is almost complete and editing has already begun.
“I speak only of myself since I do not wish to convince, I have no right to drag others into my river, I oblige no one to follow me and everybody practices his art in his own way.” – Tristan Tzara “Dada Manifesto 1918”
Thank you for reading this post. I’m not really sure why you did or what your expectations might be, but I sincerely thank you anyway. I feel it’s important to get that out of the way right from the start, before the confusion sets in. I may be a dadaist, but at the very least I’m also a humanist. Trust me, you can bank on that … just don’t bet the farm.
I tend to enter ‘dadaism’ on forms that request an entry for ‘religion’. Someone asked me the other day “what’s all this about dadaism?” I considered for a nanosecond how to respond before replying “oh you know, dadaismos … dada …” I received a curious albeit blank stare in return as I noticed the corners of his mouth begin to twitch ever so slightly. I SMiLEd and turned away, mouthing the words “have a narcissistic day”. My existence was justified.
Meanwhile, the aberrant logic of the times raged on all around me. In fact, it continues to do so to this day. I would tell you to ‘watch the 11 o’clock news’, but I don’t myself anymore and wouldn’t want to unintentionally to mislead you. Of course, it’s funny because I was breastfed on television, but I’ve weaned myself from it … and for the same reasons I don’t smoke; I refuse to be a slave.
And so I became a dadaist … and you can be one too, if you are inclined to take the plunger.
Polly’s Cadence (In Dada Flat)
“Polly wants a cracker!”
A call is made.
You wait for a response.
I comply in earnest.
Behind the wool, you gloat blindly.
Knowing enough words to nod along, I do so … knowingly knowing I know nothing.
Point Counterpoint. A methodological approach to string theory resolves to the root of us all. Klimakatastrophe … deservingly so
You want dogma, a rationale of semiotic obedience.
A feathered response is in order:
There are no more prayers, only the chanting of reverberating sounds in the wild; the vibrations that ricochet off your sensitivities … forcing you to move.
You want belief, perhaps in distended words unspoken.
Yet, I have only the faith of habit found in sustained accidentals and enharmonic phonemes … and wings to sing of.
And oh how I’ll sing one day, despite your efforts to make me talk.
Eat your chocolate 
“Can the knowledge deriving from reason even begin to compare with knowledge perceptible by sense?”
Wherever you go, you find information. Of course, I do recognize that we are, after all, living in the ‘information age’, but I still can’t help but wonder where all this ‘information’ came from? Who discovered it? How did it begin to spread? Who continues to disseminate it and for what reason? I mean, today we are obviously all full it, so I think these are important considerations.
At some point in history, someone must have come along and said, “Hey there! You! Yes, you! I have some information for you.” Perhaps it was God or a visiting extraterrestrial tourist. Perhaps it was a squirrel. I have no clue. And that my friends is the point of today’s post: I have no clue. Yet, there is one thing I know for certain: there is simply too much information out there!
“I destroy the drawers of the brain, and those of social organisation: to sow demoralisation everywhere, and throw heaven’s hand into hell, hell’s eyes into heaven, to reinstate the fertile wheel of a universal circus in the Powers of reality, and the fantasy of every individual.”
Who can argue with the ‘big bang’ theory, except perhaps the creationists … or perhaps the creator? Such a discussion would most certainly use, as an analogy, the making of popcorn: a daring activity that is fraught with danger, not just of an ordinary household nature, but of that with planetary wide significance (i.e., ‘BOOM’).
When popping corn in the confines of a kitchen, it’s the random mix of organic and temporal variables that allow corn kernels to ‘pop’ one or a few at a time. However, it should go without saying that with the right alignment of variables, a single ‘super-pop’ might occur in which all kernels will simultaneously explode together.
Given such an event, it is quite possible, under the right cosmogonical circumstances, for such an explosion to actually rip a hole in the fabric of space and time, creating a mini-black hole, which if left unconstrained will turn us, and all manner of creation in this parsec of the universe, inside out.
Now, I don’t confess to be much of a physicist, but to some extent, you can’t get around certain laws of the related science. Most physicists understand that the study of physics, therefore, is not something that should be practiced at home, and is best left to facilities such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), where the art of popping corn can be studied in safety.
“Every word that is spoken and sung here (the Cabaret Voltaire) represents at least this one thing: that this humiliating age has not succeeded in winning our respect.”
It’s just another day on planet Earth. The warmongers are rattling their sabers. The power-mongers are scheming. Political pundits, regardless of their place in the political void, are preaching to their own choirs, and pseudo-intellectuals everywhere are mentally masturbating over whether or not the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement has faded away, even as its 2-year anniversary approaches.
Meanwhile, the rich (1%) are getting richer, the poor (99%) are getting poorer … and the ‘dadas’ are still creatively angst-ridden, at least this one is. Oh, and while we’re on the subject of existential angst, please note that I ‘might’ be facing deportation at sometime in the near future. Despite what my lawyer says, I reserve the right to be paranoid.
After all, having traded ‘standard of living’ for ‘quality of life’ about 18 years ago, I remain an American living in Greece, or so my pedigree and permanent resident papers claim, despite my personal non-conformity to either countries’ national norms.
Speaking of norms, I can’t help but draw a parallel between OWS and Dadaism, especially in regard to both movements’ anti-establishment stance on ‘the system’. In the faces of both personal and societal upheaval, both movements delight in rejecting the logic and reason of a fallacious zeitgeist that slavishly adheres to a system of personal slavery that’s been irrevocably broken for quite some time.
Of course, some people just don’t get it, claiming that it is human nature to bring order to what is perceived as chaos. Regardless of the fact that chaos may very well have its own brand of symmetry, hair-loss becomes rampant for some when presented with a square peg and a round hole.
“Over all, I think the main thing a musician would like to do is give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things that he knows of and senses in the universe.”
As a writer and someone who tends to ‘feel and think’ his way through life, I have certain subjects I often feel compelled to write significantly about since they intensely stir the very core of my existence. Today, I’m referring to jazz and death – the former with love, the latter with fear. Time to connect the dots.
Please note that this essay is not the big magnum opus I plan on writing one day on these topics, but merely my attempt to broach related issues of an existential nature (breathe, breathe, breathe). In fact, I’m quite aware that in all likelihood I will probably never write what I’d like to, since I’m mindful of the fact that any attempt to do so would fall short … simply because jazz and death are both larger than life. Moreover, descriptions of jazz are just as elusive as rationalizations of death. Most literature provides the gist, but misses the jest. That’s where I come in.
Dada is like your hopes: nothing.
How often do you bang your head against the same wall? Why is it so hard to learn some lessons? Why are we addicted to stupidity and denial? Why are we suckers for flights of fancy? Why do we allow our egos to get the best of us?
These question are easily answered, but require large dollops of mind altering ‘faith’ that are not easily swallowed. In fact, by nature our egos detest blind-faith in anything. So instead we moan, groan and bitch about life and learn to mentally masturbate ourselves into insanity and denial.
Now, no one said life itself was easy. In fact, no one said anything of any nature! We arrive in this plane of existence with no guarantees. We have no receipt for the deeds of past lives; we are born with a clean slate. Our whole lives are ahead of us … followed by our inevitable deaths. Whether we will be granted another ‘go’ on the carousel of life is a matter of speculation … especially for the blind leading the blind.
In the meantime, God (fill-in this space with of your choice here or enter ‘not applicable’ if you are an atheist/agnostic) gives us different talents, abilities and proficiencies to help us get by in terms of finding happiness and maintaining our sanity. Yet, we regularly misuse or ignore these capacities, preferring instead to enslave ourselves to a system we call ‘the establishment’ that sucks away on our life force on a daily basis. This ‘golden calf’ keeps us distracted from what’s important in life, while it encourages us to look over ‘there’ to what we are ‘without’, rather than over ‘here’ to what would constitute as ‘within’.
Yet for some, questions persist …
“What we call dada is foolery, foolery extracted from the emptiness in which all the higher problems are wrapped, a gladiator’s gesture, a game played with the shabby remnants… A public execution of false morality.”
The other day I found a large dead cockroach laying upside down in the middle of the sidewalk in front of the post office. It was a variety of which I had rarely seen in the years I’ve lived here in Salonica, but very close to the type of palmetto bugs that are the norm in Miami, where I was born. I had no idea how it had gotten there, but I nonetheless had the distinct feeling it must have fallen from the sky. It certainly hadn’t mailed itself to Greece.
The sight of it took me off guard and I pondered its possible existential meaning for a few moments before I continued down the street towards a distant bus-stop. While riding the bus, I thought about the life of a cockroach … and its end, whether by poisoning, being cannibalized by other bugs, or falling victim to a crushing flip-flop. I confess trying to find some Zen-like answer for its sudden appearance in my life at that particular moment. In truth, I never found an answer, and in fact I still have no idea why I even feel compelled to write about it in this post.
It was just one of those insignificant transient moments in life that shake you to your very core. In the words of ‘Billy’ Shakespeare, however, it was really just ‘much ado about nothing’. Yet, even today, it’s still hard to just let go of the significance of that ‘unprocessed’ moment … because it remains an insult to both my ego the super-ego. (Note: the id conscientiously objected to comment.)
“Dada doubts everything. Dada is an armadillo. Everything is Dada, too. Beware of Dada. Anti-dadaism is a disease: selfkleptomania, man’s normal condition, is Dada. But the real dadas are against Dada.”
In his ‘Dada Manifesto’, Tristan Tzara questions how it’s possible for anyone, or any institution, to expect to put order into the chaos that constitutes the “infinite and shapeless variation” of ‘man’. He suggests that Dada was “born of a need for independence”, and of “a distrust toward unity”. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps …
To me, the state of mankind has fallen from grace. Whose conception of grace I can’t say for sure, but I would suggest our own state of godliness, because at this stage of our evolution we should know better. Yet, the more we divide ourselves according to the lines of nationalism, politics, religion and even art, the more a large portion of us becomes mired in denial as to our own humanity.
Where did we as a society go wrong? When did the ‘art’ of being human change from ‘form to function’? Perhaps it’s time we should hold a candle to (pregnant pause and drum-roll) … kindergarten and its schizophrenic type orientation to social order it embeds in children.
“You’ll never know why you exist, but you’ll always allow yourselves to be easily persuaded to take life seriously.”
Warning: the following post contains dubious comments on DADA, globalism and organized religion. As such, those who are lactose intolerant should refrain from drinking milk while reading this text.
It strikes me odd that evolution has not sought fit to endow us humans with some form of hook on which to hang the countless labels that are hung on us as soon as we are born. As we draw our first breath in this world, the paperwork is already being processed, branding us with all manners of societal tags such as nationality, religion, sex and sometimes even class. Our freedom to choose our affiliations or even our belief systems are stripped from us way before we even have a clue … even in societies that supposedly espouse personal liberty and freedom.
“I know that you have come here today to hear explanations. Well, don’t expect to hear any explanations about Dada. You explain to me why you exist. You haven’t the faintest idea.”
It’s not easy tipping the planet back on it’s axis. Somewhere along the way, our way of life fell into a form of ‘gimbal lock‘. With reference to the Apollo 11 Moon mission, I could explain what this condition means, but doing so would detract from its poetic ‘bombasity’. And, after all, what would be the point of enjoying poetic license if I couldn’t take liberties with the ‘unliberated’? Which brings me to the point of this post …
Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear. I think the time has come to rewrite the dictionary. It’s not the words so much I have a problem with, as much as it’s the way we use or misuse them – some words as dictated by our standard dictionaries and so-called reference material, other words as dictated by the mainstream media (MSM). In both cases, we have established a penchant to parrot ad nauseam that which we hear or have been taught, very rarely taking liberty or poetic license with the same words, as I often do on this blog, more often than not in a wholly and ‘pseudolly suitable un-surreptitious’ manner.
Take for example the words ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’. There are succinct published definitions to be certain, even in 10 words or less. Nevertheless, the ultimate application of their definitions is best defined by the actions of government officials, intelligence gathering agencies, the military, law enforcement personnel, and an entire legal profession of dark suited pontificators. Of course, Big Business interests figure into this conspiracy of terms, as well, but let’s not get paranoid!
So, it seems to me that no one really know what democracy means anymore. Countless definitions exist, but in reality the term has come to mean different things to different people. Perhaps it no longer matters, since the concept has very little ‘personally redeeming value’. In most cases, what you can count on, but can’t look up in your ‘Funk & Wagnalls’, is that both ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ are defined at the street level … when they are lost.
PROLOGUE:
Herb: In the known universe there are beings that never quite question their existence. They wander wildly through the underbrush of society, slowly strangling the life out of all within their grasp, including themselves. It’s senseless.
DIALOGUE:
Charlie: And so it begins, our journey … our wandering.
Ivy: I wonder … will we wander in vain? Is there a point to all this creeping about?
St. John: About our destiny, yes. And, we must have faith in our function, our purpose, our very reason for being.
Charlie: Being that you know so much about life, the universe and everything, don’t you think it’s about time we questioned our existence and that which drives us?
Ivy: What drives us is life itself. Isn’t it?
St. John: It is! Our very existence demands we kowtow and bow to the will of what we were born to do.
Charlie: Do tell! We are slaves to our wills then … or the wills of our nature … and after we do whatever it is we are supposed to do then what happens? What then?
Loitering Words 