I feel you’re the only person I know who would appreciate this, says August, but today I learned that the artist behind Piss Christ got a thumbs up from Pope Francis this fucking year (During the meeting, the Pope blessed Serrano and gave him a thumbs up gesture of approval.  Serrano remarked, I am very happy that the Church understands that I am a christian artist and I am not a blasphemous artist.  I am just an artist)  Andre Serrano – he also did the covers for Metallica’s Load and Reload, I say.  That’s actually awesome – I never knew the connection but they looked so familiar.  They were also made with his bodily fluids.  Yeah!  He had a whole series he did with his fluids.  I know he did a similar thing to Piss Christ where he filled a glass crucifix with pig’s blood, says August.  I wrote a long ran about Piss Christ in some other server a long time ago, I say.  I think I ended up saying how the abject needs to be holy and the body is always-already holy.  Christ exists in the abject, I say.  I think Piss Christ is significant because it brings back the shock that the image of the Cross is supposed to convey, says August.  Like we wear a symbol of state torture around our necks and put it in our cars and home décor and clothes and shit, and it’s so normalized, but like, that’s God and that’s torture and Piss Christ is a reminder that it’s not just symbol but a real painful bloody death he suffered.  It’s one of my favorites actually, says August.  That’s a great point, I say.  The Cross needs to shock us out of your stupor.  I think of Ezekiel when he says, the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah was being fat and complacent and dishonoring the poor and widow.  The cross is supposed to shake us out of that complacency, I say.

They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha, which means the place of the skull.  They offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he refused it.  Then they crucified him and shared out his clothing, casting lots to decide what each should get.  It was the third hour when they crucified him.

Black smoke rises to a Heaven I do not know
Slowly gaze to take in our sorrow
Why question a life only borrowed

Certain stations of the cross as a simple pendulum     Certain stations of the cross a simplified chart of Golgotha (and they being with him unto the place Golgotha which is, being interpreted, the place of the skull     And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him)

She beheads me at the place and places     She beheads me at the place and her place resembles the head (Sometimes I think the Asylum is a head.  We’re inside a huge head that dreams us all into being.  Perhaps it’s your head Batman.  Arkham is a looking glass… and we are you)

Calvary the place of public execution / skull strewn over skin and sewage     I abandon bodies / skull bodies bird beasts

Calvary curves the skull of Adam     The skull of Adam, after having been confided by Noah to his son Shem, and by the latter to Melchizedek, was finally deposited at the place called Golgotha

Certain stations of the cross as a simple pendulum (Since the rod is rigid, the position of the bob is contained according to the equation f(x,y) = 0, the constraint force C is the tension of the rod.  The nonconstraint force in this case is gravity)

I was talking to a friend the other day that I should find a creative exercise to reclaim the Bible, says Asia.  I just don't know what that will look like yet.  I have a journaling bible and I feel like I should use that somehow.  I use the bible a lot, I say.  But you’ll have to find your own way.  An old technique is called bibliomancy.  Isn’t that where you flip to a random passage?  Yeah.  I’ve done that before.  I used to do it a lot when I was in church.  Funnily enough, the last time I did it I flipped to a random message and I was going to journal about it to help me deconstruct my weird feelings about the Bible and I flipped to the passage about Israel being a whore lusting after lovers with dicks the size of donkey dicks, says Asia.

I’m worried that sometimes what I’m doing sounds just like academic exercises, and I’m trying more and more to make it sound prettier, says John Coltrane

I worry my experiments and explorations merely clump into incoherent academic exercises     My experiments clot into pseudo-artificial intelligence accumulations of repetitions, permutations, and combinations, and as a result the writing lacks any humanity (James Wood's hysterical realism     the big ambitious novel that pursues vitality at all costs and consequently knows a thousand things but does not know a single human being)

I worry my experiments and explorations evoke emptiness or erratic anorgasmic masturbation     awful onanism     Nevertheless I will furiously masturbate if necessary if the orgasms lead to new seed / seed broadcast palm tree garden

I was reading a John Coltrane interview, I say.  He said he wanted his music to sound less like academic exercises and he was trying to sound prettier.  He said not prettier in sound but a more lyrical melodic line to be more easily understood.  Do you think my writing is pretty?  Do you think my writing is TOO pretty?  (I feel I’m afraid of ugliness and dissonance in my writing.  I wonder how you perceive it).  How do I make my sentences more lyrical and melodic?  You would have to play with the flow, says Asia.  I think your writing usually does in parts.  So why do you want your writing to be lyrical?  I want my writing to be beautiful.  Roll off the tongue maybe.  Do you think that’s a good goal?  I think you should master it, and then keep it in your toolbox for extra potency, says Asia.  Because if you used it all the time, it would all just blur together.  Nothing would stand out, she says.  Yeah, you’re right.  How does my current writing sound to you?  I think you’ve improvised a lot.  The flow of your writing seems to get better every time I read it.  Thanks!  I’m glad.  I’m experiment with some different things right now.  I think I have to allow myself to be “ugly” and “bad” and just let myself be free for a bit.  I agree, says Asia.

I worry my experiments and explorations exude the merely intellectual without intense passions and intimacies (That human element or animal element or earth element     Not just academic exercises but – but what    but what and but then but what     but – baby got back and fat-bottomed girls     Something more and more prettier     I don’t know what it means to be prettier     I wrestle writing and I struggle scriptures and I limit myself or continually strive to write POETIC and SONOROUS and audibly CONSONANT     I don’t let myself  be BORING or UGLY or EMBARRASSING     Allow myself to be boring and pretentious – as if I’m not pretentious already but purposefully and willfully pretentious     Study conceptual poets like Kenneth Goldsmith and write purposelessly boring and purposefully boring     Even purposefully ugly although I do not know what purposefully ugly looks like – brown note comic horror     disjoint and grotesque     Doki Doki Literature Club breaking the fourth wall amen break)

He does not embarrass himself with simplicity…     I embarrass myself     I embarrass myself and I expose myself nude and new to the Book     I embarrass myself secrets and scandals Book raging bull bronze Son of Man / Son of Man stripped nude pornographic crucifixion     Calvary embarrasses and Golgotha shames / gonna carry an ugly skull when you go

Not simplicity but skin holy spirit     Not simplicity but holy spirit stripper / Salome’s performance of the Dance of Seven Veils     Not simplicity but holy spirit slip n’ slide slaughterhouse five exposed flesh in firebombings

I sketch spirits     I sketch spirits stretchers star sprawl birdwatching     I sketch birdsong siren / lamb iamb ionization     Lamb I am ionization lion roar lion of the tribe of judah     I sketch spirit sorcery nude necromancers     Skeleton strippers / desert exotic dance dancing dunes     Dancing dunes singing dunes sand strippers     Wire stripper woman scrapes my flesh clean clothes hanger     Hang khora klangfarbenmelodie

(more pulp   more nudity   more gore)

It always made me really uncomfortable to see a muppet’s entire body     My entire body mimics machines     My body entire tonka tire wheels rolls georgia guidestone golgoltha / skulls sterilized by the holy spirit     fiery tongues lick my skeleton clean     Skeleton cleans my skeleton crew skeleton coast

I sketch word as wing     Word as birdwing screaming skulls     bird blade burr birds multiply plethora of passengers / tie tune khombu pass passerines     Plethora pine top aerial musics totentanz: totentanz Taryn topless dancing (syntactical ghost trance music as an activation code triggers movements and formations)     Peacock feathers flow rose parade floats     Peacock flintlock feathers powder burns burns burr benjamin ben adam     Peacock plays as the feather plethora plunges khombu icefall passenger pigeons     Passenger pigeons plow play the feather dreaming and yardbird plays multitudes etudes variations

I write oral torah multitudes     I write oral torah etudes (not just academic exercises but interlaced intensities and intimacies)     I write oral torah variations (veronica visions valley of dumah and valley desert)

Translucent variations then transparent variations (nude crystals nude inclusions then body exits     naked inclusions the book exits) (this is not an exit) (THIS is not an exit)

I discard my sketch in the blood-soaked serac     I discard the sketch and cut scimitar lengthwise and cut in scythe widthwise     I attempt a transparent writing     Writing transparent in process and result (impossible passions the passion of Jesus Christ)     I write impossible Mary the Mother of God and she meditates on my writing and she stores all of these words in her heart     Mary Mother of God mediatrix of all graces melts the Book into prima materia and its abyss coats golgotha / my writing rows sea of reeds cross Christ crucifixion rhizome ruptures     I repeat the rupture and I repeat the rhizome

I repeat and begin the Book again

I repeat and begin again Book and Books beast from the earth edit beast from the sea     Book and Books bard again beatitudes and blessings (I repeat again and I begin again     I hope that is OK     I hope writing IS is OK     I often avoid all forms of To Be but I decide to grapple with this TO Be and play verb     I want to write pragmatically and pluralistically     I do not want to reject any tool available to me, and only consider its usefulness and artistry in contexts)

I’m not actually progressing right now, says John Coltrane.  I’m just sitting and listening, looking at the jazz scene and trying to see what has been done that I can adapt to, what I feel, to help me move out of what I’ve been doing the last two or three years.  You can get stagnant, you know.

Paul Gauguin’s Where do We Come From?  What Are We?  Where Are We Going?

Cross as Crater: Cross as extinction event

I do not progress but I excavate failed experiments and explorations

I do not progress but I sit with texts and I listen John Coltrane (New John Coltrane record came out today Evenings At The Village Gate: John Coltrane With Eric Dolphy     An NPR article by Nate Chinen begins: a little over 60 years ago, the editor-in-chief of DownBeat magazine asked John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy a deceptively simple question: what are you trying to do?  He rephrased slightly: what are you doing?  The two saxophonists sat for a long 30 seconds before Dolphy broke the silence.  That's a good question, he said)     I sit with texts and I listen to John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy (one of us keeping the groove, the other exploring and complement what was happening with the horns, writes Reggie Workman on his double bass playing with Art Davis     I write two basses     I write two basses as two languages: one keeping the groove, which is to say the themes and continuing conversations, the other language exploring and improvising)

I don’t progress but I still research texts and absorb texts: their lyricism, melodies, and ideas     They someday will erupt into my playing / writing and I will forget where they came from     I will think they come from me but nothing comes from me     Everything comes from outside of me but then I interpret the thing     The interpretation came from outside of me too, but the mystery and mysteries – the mysteries inside and outside – synthesis of texts     The Book appears formed out of the fire like the golden calf

Make us a god to god at our head; for that Moses, the man who brought us here from Egypt – we don’t know what has become of him.  I then said to them, anyone with gold, strip it off!  They gave it to me, I threw it into the fire and out came this calf!

My children, the sin committed by the outsiders, in which the Holy People participated, and a sin against the Mother, as it is written: Rise up, make us Elohim!  (Exodus 32:1) – Elohim, precisely, the Glory of Israel, the one who hovers over them like a Mother over her children.  This is the mystery of what is written: They exchanged their glory (Psalms 106:20) – the Glory of Israel, their Mother, this is what is written!  Glory is exiled (1 Samuel 4:22), for they caused Shekinah to be exiled along with them.  Thus, they exchanged their glory.  For what?  For the image of a bull.

Benjamin, get to work – make Elohim     Benjamin, get to work – make Elohim excess and Elohim Earth, the immediately sin and immediately gospel

I sin in image and I sin in icon, the absolute imagination of the Gospel

I make the Book Elohim – the image of a golden calf, the image of a bronze Son of Man with bull’s head