Genericity/Generosity

Several years ago it was really hitting me that on the surface, our surroundings are incredibly bland, other-directed and harsh.  If you stop watching TV for a year or two and go back to watching it, you might notice how casually crass it seems.  If you drive, bus, bike or walk down one of the major streets in Portland that function as surface freeways you'll see the same fast "food" places, automalls, big box stores and "Joe's primitive bar" (like Rob Tyner sings in "American Ruse"), as you would on any one of the other major freeway-type streets---in Portland, or somewhere in Utah, or Minnesota, or wherever.  It's just as unreal and in your face there as here.

So what do we do to keep ourselves from getting overwhelmed by all this crass, generic whitewash?  Act like real live human beings, I suppose.  Look people in the eye.  Engage in conversation when appropriate.  Quit looking at everyone as a potential customer. 

You can do this without making yourself vulnerable to "agressive panhandlers", as business owners like to call them, or child molesters, or scary schizoids.  Be aware of your surroundings.  Yank the ipod earbuds out.  Put your thumbs away and quit texting.  Like William Burroughs says, see them before they see you.  Then decide whether to engage.

When I saw a bunch of rad glass-and-enamel beads my friend James Jones of Bullfrog Beads made, they reminded me of the movie Metropolis and the Art Deco style.  He actually gave me one of the beads, and I just began grouping other smaller beads with it by color.  I had the idea of making a neckpiece that illustrated the staying-sane-in-generic-surroundings idea, but didn't have any concrete ideas formed yet. 

Then my sig other George got a call from an old friend, Gary.  The conversation turned to the crazy prices paid for collectable records and Gary related a story that illustrated the notion of being non-generic beautifully: 

Gary was living in Seattle in about 1980.  He had a ton of records, thousands, that he'd been buying since he was a teenager in the 1960s.  It was about this time that the collector value of the MC5's first record, "Kick Out the Jams" was going up up up.  This is not the reprint, it was the original, uncensored version that was yanked out of stores in a hurry.  Idealist Gary was most heinously offended that such a freedom-loving slab of vinyl should be hived away for fetishistic collector types and not disseminated to the masses as originally intended.  (Besides, only a few years before, you could find this and many other great records in the 29-cent cut-out bin). 

So did Gary start crying about it?  No, he went home and got one of the two copies he had of this record and gave it away to the next stranger he encountered on the street (or bar).  He had no idea whether the recipient would like it, he just wanted someone, anyone to have it and maybe get inspired by it. 

A few weeks later he did happen to run into this guy again, and dude was flipping out on how great it was:  he's a musician, it changed his life, can't thank him enough, etc.  Now, Gary is no philanthropist, and he could seriously use the money this record would bring.  But the few drinks it would buy him would have been pissed away long ago; instead, there is another human on the planet who has had the pleasure of hearing "Kick Out the Jams, Motherfucker!!!" and other inspiring tunes. 

When I heard about all this I knew it had to be commemorated.  It's obvious what the big yellow hand is about.  The netting at left is about the veils we put up between us and the outside; there's a little face at the top of that part, hiding behing the netting.  The 3-D grid shape at right, along with two other rectangular pieces adjacent to it symbolize city office highrises; there's another face at top with a bar code where the eyes would go.  There's also a little trail of hands spiraling up from the big hand (little things count, folks!). 

The piece is all doubled thread and beads.  I had a general idea of what I wanted to create when I began, and sketched out some forms, but pretty much ditched them as I worked.  The piece tends to morph as the work progresses.  The hand was made in freeform peyote stitch, without an armature.  I stuffed it when it was almost ready to close up, but it's the beads themselves that determine the shape of it.  To figure out how and when to shape it, I held the piece-in-progress up about 6 inches in front of my right hand (is it time to widen out for the thumb yet? etc.). 

In March 2009 I had the privilege of giving a talk and several days of workshops for the Great Lakes Beadworkers Guild in the Detroit area, where the MC5 are from.  Besides being a super great bunch of people individually, many of these nice ladies have personal connections to the Detroit rock scene of the 1960s.  One lady's sister was the drummer for an all-woman group called the Pleasure Seekers (Suzi Quatro's first band), another lady is a professional bass player, both acoustic and electric; another lady (Diane Pettis)'s husband (Frank Pettis) was a rock photographer whose picture of Alice Cooper was published in CREEM magazine when it was done on newsprint. 

Diane was kind enough to cook up a righteous lasagne dinner and invite photographer Leni Sinclair over (while recuperating from heart surgery---her heart is BIG), and I got to tell them the story of the neckpiece pictured above.  Plus I got to try not to drool too profusely over her photos, Frank's photos, and pretend to drink from an original can of CREEM's famous "Boy Howdy" beer.  In case you haven't already ascertained that I'm a rocknroll fangal, here's a hint:  I correctly identified all but one the 8 x 10 glossies Frank had collected over the years picturing  Aerosmith, KISS, Chuck Berry, and about 57 more.  Diane and Leni are amazingly sweet, Frank is a sweet, unique tripper.  Thanks to GLGB program chair Joanne Goldberg and Frank I got to go record shopping TWICE while in the Detroit area, as well as visit Detroit's CPop Gallery before it met its demise.  Frank and Leni are featured massively in a book called Motor City Rock and Roll, which features excellent pictures from the 1960s and 1970s Detroit rock and roll scenes.  Believe me, if Frank and Leni had enough money to process all their film, the world would be a better place.

So, here's to people who reach out to others.  You know who you are!