Waxing Poetically: Addressing Culture with a Twist of Poetry

Featured at Art from the Outskirts

In a world where digital vendors such as itunes and Amazon are quickly becoming buyers’ method of choice to shop for music. Spin Magazine columnist David Merchese notes an all too insidious down side to it all: the white power rock movement.

In a short essay in the January 2009 issue of Spin Merchese tells the little-told tale of white power music’s rise in the digital age:

“Like any musician, Brutal Attack’s Ken McLellan wants to be heard. Only, what he wants people to hear are self-described ‘white power’ anthems with lines like ‘This is the Final Solution / Our turn / They’ll burn,’” says Merchese. But whereas in previous brick and mortar times, patrons would be reluctant to purchase the music of aryan revelers, it’s all now one click away.

Bands such as the questionably named Brutal Attack have spent many years being banished from retailers for the fear that those stores carrying the titles would face sales-eviscerating protests and logically enraged shoppers. So for many years mail order and concerts were the main line of both promotion and distribution. But now that the digital era has allowed a much more faceless and clandestine distributor to sell through a third party on sites like Amazon and itunes with out much of a middleman or content filter, these titles creep into the growing plurality on content from excellent to horrible.

“For $9.99, you can download Brutal Attack’s anti-immigrant, pro-white Tales of Glory from iTunes. It’s a buck cheaper on Amazon. A physical copy is yours for $16 on CD Baby,” says Merchese. However, impossible it may sound, in America under the First Amendment, it is perfectly legal to sell songs of any type of protest so long as it does not directly advocate unprovoked injury, or death to another living being. But according to Nora Flannigan of the anti-defamation organization Turn It Down, it has never been a legality issue, but simply an issue of right and wrong. She tells Merchese, “Companies could choose not to sell this stuff. Instead, they hide behind the First Amendment. Refusing to make money from racism isn’t censorship; it’s the right thing.”

But Amazon spokesperson Patti Smyth and others present a slippery slope agrument that if they were to censor one, than any number of others may equally be in trouble. Smyth says “[Amazon] doesn’t feel it should be deciding what’s right for consumers. That’s a slippery slope that we don’t want to be on.”

Finally, Merchese points to the recent election of Barack Obama as a mark agaist the white power rock moment saying that though Ken McLellan and others like him may have a right to an opinion, like the opinion of the world being flat, it is just wrong.

After reading the piece, one might consider online retailers’ changing their tunes (for risk of a bad pun) and realizing the voice of consumers. But with the ever-expanding diversity of product available online, that voice becomes increasingly schizophrenic. So it may be that that old mantra of Libertarianism of “If ya don’t like it, don’t buy it!”

(Read the full article here).

Wax without hatred.

“I was raised Catholic, so I’ve grown up practicing ritual cannibalism and blood drinking with a Jewish cult that just happened to have some very aggressive PR men. I believe in an undead hippy carpenter who died two thousand years ago, but listens to me when I call him up to bitch about my career and occasionally say thanks for a bout of good weather and a nice vacation. So who am I to laugh at other people’s crazy beliefs?” - Paul Bibeau, Sundays with Vlad

In his recent documentary book Sundays with Vlad, Paul Bibeau takes on all the myth and mystique surrounding the world’s seeming obsession with Dracula. In this excerpt, Bibeau discusses his tolerance for neo-Gothic culture and occasional the creepy pallor of Hot Topic employees in his neighborhood mall by rather concisely dissecting the Roman Catholic faith in the above terms (i.e., the bread and wine of communion actually become the body and blood of the risen Christ in masked form in some less Hannibal Lector-like kind of way).

I haven’t read the book itself, but when I saw this quote on a friend’s Facebook page, I had to snatch it up and comment on it here. I laughed heartily and thought to myself, “This definition makes Scientology look normal… jeez!”

For more on Sundays with Vlad visit the book’s homepage here.

Wax with a sense of humor!

This is real!

If the video doesn’t play, click here

Wax in truth and justice!

In the Mid-Nineties a cartoon called Animaniacs lit of up the FOX television lineup with jokes about Freudian theory, Bill Clinton’s saxophone playing skills, Baby Nostradamus prophesying pooping his pants, and too little laboratory mice named Pinky and The Brain plotting to take over the world among other things. But on one gloriously memorable occasion a little-know geographer named every nation of the world in less than two minutes in a wonderfully kid-friendly song! To show that Waxing Poetically is not so stoically serious all the time, here is that song plus two others to float your intellectual and cultural commentary boats and possibly make you chuckle a little while floating!

Yakko Warner Sings Every Nation on Earth
Note: Puerto Rico is not a country. It is however a US territory. Also, Yugoslavia is now broken up into several smaller countries since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Uploaded by YouTube member drzm

Bonus: “The Brain” Teaches the Parts of the Brain

Uploaded by YouTube member overtud1

Bonus: Yakko Warner Sings all the Words of the Dictionary (Not really).

Uploaded by YouTube member TheseApples

Wax geographically!

Also posted at Art from the Outskirts

In this clip from December 2006, a local FOX Network affiliate in Virginia reports a high school art teacher has been suspended for using his buttocks (and supposedly his genitals) to make art prints. Many of which and composed by his stamping is paint-soaked posterior on to a canvas to make floral prints and more.

The man who goes by the alias Stan Murmur has his work available online at buttprintart.com.

Video uploaded by SSarah98

It is to be noted that while his technique is controversial and abominabal to many his work is structural well composed Also the above website does not either explicitly or implicitly advocate any particular behavior.

Weigh in on the debate: Does this art offend you? Does it intrigue you?

Wax with an opinion.

The worldwide effects of economic recession are being felt in the most common of ways. Yet the solutions are coming from newer and more surprising places.

A Reuters report from Christmas Eve reports that Tokyo has been housing some of its recently laid off residents and homeless in Internet cafes. Lodging is only 20 dollars a night and lodgers have access to a shower and Internet as well as coffee, magazines and comic books. Should other countries consider this option? Necessity is after all the mother of invention.

Reader Questions

Do you think this idea would work in other countries?

How long do you think this program will last?

Can you think of any ways to improve the program?

Waxing is the mother of invention!

Archived from November 21, 2008 from my arts blog

The Black Mozart Ensemble is a far-out, far reaching dream-like fusion of Jazz, hip hop, blues, blue grass and classical music in a melting pot stew of wonderful, and joyously youthful energy conducted by Roy “Futureman” Wooten. The original intent of the project was to tell the story of little-known Eighteenth Century French maestro and composer Joseph Boulogne de Saint Georges while celebrating diverse musical and cultural landscapes in a vibrant live concert/theatre setting. The current show also features several Eastern influences to add even more terrific flavor to an already spicy lineup!

…St. Georges used his abilities to find fame and fortune, yet as the son of a slave, remained an outsider. He fought against racism all his life, and can serve as a powerful hero for all of us as we struggle against the racism and divisiveness of today.

The Black Mozart Ensemble is composed of young virtuoso violinists and cellists under the direction of Futureman. The music is complemented by the addition of hip hop artists, and actors/narrators. The music of Black Mozart has a message for the ears, eyes and moves of today’s modern world. Futureman states that this composition, The Black Mozart is a personal statement of New American Classical Roots and Dance Music with social aspirations that embraces all races of humanity. (Read more at Futureman’s Myspace page).

Video by YouTube member Thien10

Get funky on the Outskirts!

Archived November 15, 2008

Google image from previous post

Alan Wilson Watts (1915-1973) was a naturalized English-American author, philosopher, theologian and life-long student of comparative religion whose work continues to be best known for a introducing Eastern theology in into Western thought. He waxed rather poetically in his time, hehehe!

What is nothing? Describe nothing. If you do so, you’ll find that what you see, hear, touch, taste or smell as “nothing” cannot in any way be described without relating it to “something”. In art for example, there is the idea of positive and negative space by which a person’s eyes will see a background behind an object. The background is considered less important than the object. Yet, without the background and the space around the object, the object has no form. Therefore somethingness and nothingness exist only because of each other.

Alan Watts on Nothingness

Video by YouTube member ReflectedFlicks

Wax in nothing to create something.

Archived from August 15, 2008

The paradox of free will and freedom to choose good versus evil is surely an age-old dilemma since the very beginning of existence from all angles, the question of why we do what we do, and why we make the decisions we make . It’s all very strange and disconcerting. The following argument was initially my attempt to solve this problem but in the end, it was all much more a comedy than a solution. It contrasts animal instinct against human ingenuity and makes the case that though we human beings do have the ability to make logical choices, that can never assure that we will decide to do so.

In the Biblical Garden of Eden when God told Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the two were inevitably tempted toward it, with wide-eyed, childlike precociousness and when given a pass by the guile and tricks of the serpent, they felt it reason enough to throw all God’s rules aside even when God had told them verbatim they would surely die. Both Adam and Eve risked death to embrace the most base and immediate desires, rather than listen a logical argument which if followed though would guarantee eternal life with no further thoughts, questions, instructions or payment needed. Now that’s a deal that seemingly not even the most ravenous game show player could refuse (even if Howie Mandel were hosting).

Yet, somehow, someway, somewhere in the deepest, blackest recesses of our minds, we human beings will still reach for the forbidden fruit. We are often the ones to laugh at danger. While the the other creatures retire to the comfort of their caves, holes and nests, We wrestle alligators and hunt bears for the thrill. While the birds of the sky fly south to escape the harsh air of winter, we prodigious, fun-loving and earth-walking homosapiens who have not even the slightest natural ability to fly, volunteer to jump out of planes and “almost” die by allowing gravity to hurl and tumble our bodies to ground and at the proper time, pulling open our “death saving” parachute in order that we prevent our untimely (but quite likely under normal circumstances) deaths; and While the unwitting beasts of the wild instinctively scavenge for the proper food to best fit their nutritional daily recommended allowances, humans fumbling though their refrigerators will say a hardy, “f*** you” to the broccoli on their left and instead snatch up the “one third of a baby cow” angus burger to their right. Finally, lest we forget the paradox of human relationships. Unlike Johnny Bumble Bee and Felicia Fox who are likely in search of the strongest, smartest and healthiest mates in the hive or pack, the young men of our time often notice that the ladies love the bad boys, dropouts and beer swillers.

The examples are many and though this post is partly in jest, it is nevertheless based fully on real life observations. The anguish and absurdity of this shot essay is factual and shows freedom of choice might actually be a kind of cosmic joke. If so, God, or at the very least, nature is awesomely hilarious!

In closing Below is the parable “Good God, Evil God” by Khalil Gibran from his book The Madman to put all the points discussed together without making anyone’s brain short out. Read it carefully and with much thought. See what meaning you can take from it. What does it say to you about the nature of man? What does it say for man’s concept of God?

“The Good God and the Evil God”

The Evil God walked away cursing the stupidity of man.

Keep waxin’ folks! I’ll be here.

The Meaning of the Season

Archived from November 27, 2008

Listen to this song and lyrics.

James Morrison - “Man in the Mirror” (Michael Jackson cover)

Audio and picture uploaded by YouTube user lacyness

What does it mean to you?…

Being Thankful

Many people have things about themselves they wish to change. those things may be physical, as in their teeth, their body weight or their hairlines. They may be material as in a better house, car, job, nice clothing or a certain type of food. But if those same needs are magnified by extreme poverty, terrible disease and a lack of basic food, these wants become more and more trivial. There are always those who focus so much on what they don’t have that they often miss what they do have. This is what Thanks-giving is - to recognize what opportunities and blessings have already come true and to be grateful for them. In the same way, giving during the holidays, whether they be Christmas, Hanukkah or the new year are times to be thankful for what is and the hope of what can be.

Complaining Versus Being Pro-active

People might want their situations to get better by chance. They will spend hours on end praying and hoping for problems to get better on their own, but the problems don’t go away. People will lose hope, give up, or say, “My prayer didn’t work” never realizing that the change they want may be possible through their own actions. To that point, this song is a message of active participation in making change happen by looking at the “person in the mirror” for a solution rather than just wishing upon a star and hoping it’s enough to save the day.

Wax for a better world.