VirusHead

My friend Grateful Bear is celebrating the birthday of Pulizer-prize-winning Zen eco-poet Gary Snyder, and I’m joining the birthday party!

Happy Birthday Gary Snyder!

The Modern Poetry site (Dept. of English, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) has an interesting subsite on him that includes the following:

“Conservatism has some very valid meanings,” he says. “Of course, most of the people who call themselves conservative aren’t that, because they’re out to extract and use, to turn a profit. Curiously, eco and artist people and those who work with dharma practice are conservatives in the best sense of the word-we’re trying to save a few things!

“Care for the environment is like noblesse oblige,” he maintains. “You don’t do it because it has to be done. You do it because it’s beautiful. That’s the bodhisattva spirit. The bodhisattva is not anxious to do good, or feels obligation or anything like that. In Jodo-shin Buddhism, which my wife was raised in, the bodhisattva just says, ‘I picked up the tab for everybody. Goodnight folks…’ “

I can’t resist reposting one of the poems, considering my tagline!

For All

Ah to be alive
on a mid-September morn
fording a stream
barefoot, pants rolled up,
holding boots, pack on,
sunshine, ice in the shallows,
northern rockies.

Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
cold nose dripping
singing inside
creek music, heart music,
smell of sun on gravel.

I pledge allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.

Pink’s new song “Dear Mr. President” features backup vocals from Indigo Girls. We need more and more songs like this.

Dear Mr. President
Come take a walk with me
Let’s pretend we’re just two people and
You’re not better than me
I’d like to ask you some questions if we can speak honestly

What do you feel when you see all the homeless on the street
Who do you pray for at night before you go to sleep
What do you feel when you look in the mirror
Are you proud

How do you sleep while the rest of us cry
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye
How do you walk with your head held high
Can you even look me in the eye
And tell me why

Dear Mr. President
Were you a lonely boy
Are you a lonely boy
Are you a lonely boy
How can you say
No child is left behind
We’re not dumb and we’re not blind
They’re all sitting in your cells
While you pay the road to hell

What kind of father would take his own daughter’s rights away
And what kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay
I can only imagine what the first lady has to say
You’ve come a long way from whiskey and cocaine

How do you sleep while the rest of us cry
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye
How do you walk with your head held high
Can you even look me in the eye

Let me tell you bout hard work
Minimum wage with a baby on the way
Let me tell you bout hard work
Rebuilding your house after the bombs took them away
Let me tell you bout hard work
Building a bed out of a cardboard box
Let me tell you bout hard work
Hard work
Hard work
You don’t know nothing bout hard work
Hard work
Hard work
Oh

How do you sleep at night
How do you walk with your head held high
Dear Mr. President
You’d never take a walk with me
Would you

Joseph Nechvatal, my friend and intellectual compadre in viral realms, has his latest exhibition in Ohio. “Contaminations” has been extended to run through June 25th at the Butler Institute of American Art’s Beecher Center. The show includes a selection of computer-robotic assisted paintings starting in the mid-1980’s and concludes with a recent electronic viral installation.

Go see!
Joseph Nechvatal: Contaminations

Or if you happen to be in Youngstown, Ohio:
The Beecher Center for Technology in the Arts
Butler Institute of American Arts
524 Wick Ave. Youngstown, Ohio 44502
tel# 330-743-1711

While you’re visiting his website, be sure to see the new nOOlOgy : guilt of a nation. Here is his introduction:

In art, pleasure is a most legitimate aspiration. Still one may not ignore that people all over the world today bend-over painfully and act in accordance with seemingly normal systems of control: noological systems (*) that may seem at the time logically inevitable.

My current chain of history paintings called “the new nOOlOlogy” are based on a fraction of the infamous digital photos from the Abu Graib abuse scandal. As such, they present embedded images of American torture. Here American detainees are punished and humiliated and then adorned through an a-life process of viral attack laden with the latent content of ambiguous bioterror. These digital (computer-robotic) acrylic paintings link together systems of exposed nerves with the torture at Abu Graib – now festooned with miniature hermaphrodites infected by viral attacks that undermine them.

For me they are an attempt at expressing America’s deep demoralization. They are moral acts then, free with the truth of our penchant for desire. As such, these paintings contribute slightly to the downfall of the present reality in that they bury visual memory at the outset.

To those that persist in the amorality of Abu Graib, I shit on you. You have discredited me by creating a rotting nation. Although I have opposed you at every turn, never-the-less, you have made me feel guilty and dirty too, as only a single officer has been reprimanded for this disgraceful display thus far.

This artistic activity, in tribute to Leon Golub, is a conscious response to the world of irrational conventions in which I can find even myself.

Joseph Nechvatal

(*) Noology is the science of intellectual phenomena. n. study of intuition and reason. nooscopic, a. pertaining to examination of mind.

And as if all that weren’t enough, he has a brilliant article (”Jean Baudrillard and a Counter-Mannerist Art of Latent Excess“) in the latest issue of the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies (Volume 3, Number 2 – July 2006).

Intellectual acumen, creative artistry, ethics and tech – this guy stuns me, always. Keep it going Joseph! You are an oasis in the desert.

The Roving Ellipsis hosts the Progressive Faith Blog carnival this week. Great job weaving the various strands together!

Are you a progressive faith blogger? Join here.

The Carnival will be hosted next week by Velveteen Rabbi.

It’s a matter of aesthetics. I simply find certain kinds of mouths repulsive. For me, it all has to do with the teeth.

The worst mouth? The one where you have to wonder whether or not there are any teeth at all. The person hardly ever lets you see them. I dislike the bulldog expression – the bottom teeth appear, but the top teeth do not. I dislike very small teeth – they look like corn on the cob.

If you add tension, smirking, and other strange manneristic muscular signals to the secret-teeth, bottom-teeth-only, or corn teeth, then I have a very primal sort of reaction.

It’s a kind of prejudice – it is certainly a preference. Back in the day when I was basically a serial monogamist, all of my boyfriend/lovers had medium-to-large white teeth (not that it matters here, but I am also partial to strong chins and warm expressive eyes). My husband shows his nice white teeth. My whole family has big white gleaming teeth. Maybe it’s a narcissistic tribal affiliation.

Perhaps it is a coincidence, but my Dad lost all his teeth when he was young. I had the most trouble relating with him when his dentures were rather small. Later, when he was older, the dentures were (or at least seemed) bigger, and he smiled more often (and more naturally). We got along better – but that was probably for other reasons altogether. Still – I wonder if this sort of thing could really be a subliminal/unconscious factor i our responses to others?

I don’t care about skin color or language or class or sexuality – but I just don’t like those scary little teeth set in those hard unfeeling mouths. In such a case I may have to admire him (usually it’s a him I mean) in spite of teeth capacity or expressive usage. Someone would have to be so brillant or witty or creative that I would overlook the scary teeth situation, like say… Anthony Hopkins.

I never realized this about myself until now. I know this is a really odd thing. I wonder if I am alone in feeling this way. Having realized this, I’ll have to be more conscious of it in my daily interactions with people. It may be unfair, maybe, may… be.

I like big clean white teeth that show up and make a strong appearance. Americans are known all over the world for our big white honest teeth. Sometimes the teeth may suggest some sort of aggression, like a tiger baring its teeth, but I still prefer that to the scary little teeth. I’m very welcoming to Mormons at the door despite having been a door-to-door cousin Jehovah’s Witness – for some reason they tend to have great teeth (and they are so wonderfully earnest).

Actually I think there are people who prefer the secret teeth, the corn on the cob, show-the-bottom-teeth like a bulldog kind of thing. Maybe they are equally repulsed by people who show their upper teeth. Maybe they are self-conscious about their own teeth. I can’t say that I have the answers on this.

Could there be a political divide – could teeth actually be a factor?

I started having wild thoughts about this. JFK and Jimmy Carter showed teeth. The Clintons have the teeth and so does Kerry. Hollywood people are, of course, big teeth-showers. I’m sometimes undecided about Ahhnold – I like his teeth – but I notice that he doesn’t show them much when he is around the President.

It seems like such a shallow sort of thing, but I wonder if there really are any perceptual differences or other psychological effects across populations based on tooth preferences. I have really gotten to dislike the white male republican kind of mouth. Here’s what I mean.

Nixon had a nice smile:

But is that how we remember him? No, here is the mouth I think of…

Bush is more attractive to me when he shows his teeth.

See? This is nice.

But here is how I see him in my mind’s eye:

It’s probably not a consistent thing. I’m sure there are lots of attractively-toothed Republicans and some scary little-toothed bulldog-underbited Democrats. Condi has a big toothy smile, but that one is a bit terrifying. Zell Miller looked like what he really was, a DINO. Joe Leiberman is borderline – smallish teeth but he shows them sometimes.

Still, here are a few examples of mouths with expressions that I find particularly unattractive.

Cheney

Rumsfeld

Rove

DeLay

Perdue (GA Gov)

Chambliss (GA Sen)

Man O man, show me thy teeth.