It’s that time again
[NOTE: Bumped up from yesterday.]
Yes, it’s hard to believe, isn’t it? Time passes so quickly when we’re enjoying ourselves.
But yes, it’s been a while since I asked you to donate to a semi-worthy cause: this blog. And so I’m going to ask you again.
Every single donation— large or small—adds up, and helps me a great deal in continuing the blog. If each reader gave even a few dollars, it would be a glorious thing. But whether you decide to donate or not, please keep visiting and keep commenting. Comments are a very big part of what makes this blog work.
I thank you all in advance. I’ll probably repeat this notice every now and then, the equivalent of jiggling that cup/hat. But I’ll be discreet about it. And it’s a lot better than those fund-raising drives they have on NPR, isn’t it? No interruption of the scheduled programming.
Nifty. I just placed another amazon.com order via neo yesterday.
Just hope you don’t donate those nickels to Romney… 😉
In for a fin. Keep up the good work, Neo.
I tossed a few bucks in the collection basket in honor of Newt and Rick.
I wish I had money to give. You will have to settle for this link – for now.
The PTSD Party
According to Instapundit, today is “Blogger Appreciation Day.” He doesn’t provide a link, so I’ll just have to take his word for it.
neo,
I promise to send you money once I’m back home and using a computer that I know is as secure as I can make it be when it comes to on line transactions. Right now I’m with my daughter, supporting her after her chemo session on Wednesday. But rest assured I’ll remember to send you some digital cash. Keep on trucking. Your blog is my favorite place in the weird www world.
Parker
Parker: much appreciated. And I hope your daughter’s chemo continues to go very well!!!
http://www.youtube.com/user/AcidPoPArtist:
LASTLY: MY FIRST “MESSAGE TO ALL” — BUT MAINLY TO THE UN — via Fox and from Tehran, May 2003.
[My brand new one started here, one year ago @
http://neoneocon.com/2011/03/30/walmart-and-the-women-and-the-law/#comment-237822%5D :
“About the following document I called “Testimony and Manifesto”, I ask you to please print it and read it and for sure send it to the President of the United States and to all the members of his Administration. With the President’s help, I hope that very soon — once I will be out of Tehran, with my paintings- all the members of the U.N. will have acces to my Manifesto also, i.e. all the leaders and all the governments around the world, present and future; and finally, to testify my words, I wish that the Dalai-Lama -the Dalai-Lama, not the Pope!- will also read me and hopefully share these universal points of view which could be Jesus’ words or the Buddha’s, if they were still alive.
The divided (and so uninspiring for the East) West has caused or maintained the ‘loss’ of the East and now, as a result, it has also caused the loss of the West -since 9-11.
Leadership is a vocation and it’s sacred, in the same way it’s a vocation to become soldier —for a country and in an Army who only fights for Freedom, not to enslave countries. In the Sufi language only Spiritually rich and high souls deserve the rank of Kings. There are too many politicians who make noise and fight for their own ego, instead of the Unity of the World.
The Marxist approach (still so appreciated amongst Intellectuals and teachers and critics) is out-of-date. Instead of unifying people, nations, individuals, it separates them -with hatred and jealousy-, blacks from whites, rich from poor, Jews from Arabs, West from the East. It’s an honor to be “invaded” by the U.S.A. Without her help, there will be no chance to educate properly the East and the South and even the Europeans (who should listen to Fox News instead of CNN or Hollywood dramas; and realize that Journalism is not about gossiping or interpretating but reporting and revealing in order to transcend all worldwide clichés and distortions that unfortunately make the law but belong to people’s own Illusions.)
It’s not a crime to be rich, it’s not a crime to be American, and it’s not a crime to be pro-America. But these are the silent Consensus that are spread all across the globe (including Europe). It’s a leftwing notion. And unfortunately, it is at the source of the regression of the Muslim and Arab world -as one example- and the African continent anyway.
The Neoconservatives and Republicans in the US are the political and artistical avant-garde of our time. Artists because their hearts and their minds are fair, balanced and free from any Ideology but freedom, happiness, Joy and diversity. Instead of nursing (=enslaving) their populations —what Socialists, Muslims and Mafiosi do naturally-, they ask them to grow, spiritually first, then materially, for their own benefit and then for the benefit of the Whole…
(Tehran, the 26th of june 2003)
“A MESSAGE TO ALL” (including David Asman, Eric Shawn, Geraldo Rivera…and all the brave soldiers who were in the middle of Hell far away from Home) — Tehran, the 6th of May 2003
I am writing you from Tehran where I temporarily live: I left Brussels, Belgium -in 1992- where I was born and where I grew up and worked, as architect. I lived few years in Milano (Italy) to gain more knowledge and more experience + taste more Sun and more Beauty; came back to Brussels and finally, at 32, abandoned my free and apparent secure but ‘boring’ office life in a ‘culturally gray country’ (gray to me), and decided to fly to Iran where I had never lived until then, just visited when I was young (Shah time).
Office life for me was my jail and I couldn’t enjoy life. To become one day a ‘universally free and famous Artist’ and be able to fly one day to N.Y.C (an unaffordable dream for me at the time), I had one choice only: go to Iran where life is cheaper if you count on your own dollars (my father’s) and give yourself the time to learn (through intense reading) what you couldn’t learn before because schools don’t focus on all the more essential issues of life: the meaning of Life, the mission of man, the confrontation with our own self, our freedom; and the discovery of our real interest and capability -something that if found out would bring everybody on earth prosperity and autonomy.
Life in Iran, under the Islamic government, is harder for a woman than for a man. Not that a woman can not work but she is always watched as inferior, inferior to the man, his future ‘wife and slave’, and when she tries to act like him, be free and for example show her hair, she would be called a ‘whore’, whatever this word may mean to them (godless for sure). It’s a silent consensus. And no woman here is ready to fight for that basic right and hear in return an insult (best case!). This is the only concern of the moralists and the ignorants: (Mis)Judge, condemn and accuse, using God’s name, morality and holy books —which after all were written by previous ignorant theocrats inspired by Devil (Dark Side of God and the God of the Ignorants), poor imitation of God, but not God.
The good part is that I met here other Persian souls (I could never meet before since they lived in the US) who had decided to make the same move I did: come back in Iran since the Iran/Irak war had ended and more important or as much, after the news of Khomeini’s passing. Like me, they belonged to the “privileged classes” -educated abroad and open-minded- from the old era. So, despite the ugliness of an ‘Iranian Islamic’ environment and looks, I could enjoy in my own privacy, conversations and friendship with people of my generation, artists like me and universal like myself.
In 1998, I finally switched to my forever dream: Painting. After 5 years, I found my own style, can give it a name: Acid Pop Art, where ‘acid’= a more humble word and still meaningful way to translate ‘pop abstract’ and ‘abstract pop’ — ‘abstract’ meaning divine and free, ‘pop’ meaning: Spirit and Expression of the American Way of Life when Industry, (Show-)Business and Art have proved their compatibility and, as result, humbly and generously, generates Joy (GOD). I miraculously found out that because of my deep and profound beliefs in American Values, I was able to paint like a true American pop artist if that artist would choose to express abstract and pop together. I can now find my place in New York as family of Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat; as soul-sister of the same Jean-Michel Basquiat and of Lou Reed, another true Living Legend in American Culture, being admitted that Souls don’t die and Eternity is (a) Reality —both being my two American heroes who have been able to touch my heart and inspire me in such way that I began to paint hoping that I would be able to express on canevas my true devotion to them and my real recognition of who they are; and I did. I am now in the silence of my apartment waiting for an opportunity to export myself, meaning be able to touch the heart of some vessel or messenger who would help me meet Lou and then hopefully, one day, the President of the United States — Lou, at my side, because my courage is full of shyness: In year 2000, I painted two prophetic paintings I called “American Flag” and “Persian Flag” inspired by a Lou Reed tune called “I Wanna Be Black”. The day they will be exhibited in New York City, I will be revealed to the whole world, including Islamists and French, hoping that with the presence of a true King and a real Superior Man (Lou Reed) at my side, we will both contribute to spread the right words all around the world, the voices of two Truth-seekers (actually three with Jean-Michel Basquiat) who know what Freedom and Life in their highest definition truly mean, who also know that there is no true Knowledge and true Awareness without struggle, that the ultimate and legitimate fight is the fight for the Light and Lightness agains tIgnorance and oppression and that the role of the Creators and the true Leaders is to bring Clarity and Freedom to all the “slaves” of the world so that nobody will be able to fool anybody no more in the future because all the answers to all the questions and mysteries of life can be found and revealed by accomplished Visionaries and Truth seekers who have always been able to pay with their own ”blood” the price of their lifetime struggle for Beauty, Truth and Life i.e. for human rights, peace, Clarity and Justice, for Love, Beauty and Freedom, for Light and Harmony; so, for the ultimate Knowledge which brings to the ultimate Awareness and the real Humbleness of the Superior Man (humbleness before God, not submission to the Devils, the Monkeys and the Businessmen).
With the 9-11 profane terrorist act, my current situation of struggle and confrontation with Islamic despotism became also and suddenly USA’s share, and more unbelievable, New York city, its most sacred place, the most beautiful and successful example of the nation’s dream when that vision could create the Highest and more Universal, Generous, Mythical, Magical, Modern/Ancient, Heart Beating City, New York.
Not everybody around the world think this way, i.e. accept that the USA are truly ways above all other nations on earth, Spiritually (intellectually, culturally, ethically,…), not just Materially. It’s unfortunate that the entire world is anti-American. What do you expect from Muslims when France (through this government and through the voice of its journalists), civilized but nationalist and jealous, accuses the USA of Imperialism and likes to spread the word on TV without measuring the impact of these killing and untrue words on all the already brainwashed minds around the world? They must beblind or deaf. Are they stupid or very vicious?They also build their pseudo-analysis putting the blame on the “current cowboy President and his so-called falcons”, at a time America has become one again with her own values and is ready to put action for it, has already proved it with the destruction of the Taliban and hopefully with the complete elimination of all Islamic dictatorships and macho systems of ignorant gangsters and killers.
The biggest damage begins inside America in the battle between Democrats and Republicans. Why can’t they become one and fight for the same true values together? During this conflict, I had the fortune to be linked to the satellite and discover FOX NEWS CHANNEL (a true miracle!), Truth-seeker Journalists and Superior Men! I thank God every day that such miracle did happen. French news is truly disgusting and in general practice unprofessional journalism, clearly anti-American and pro-Arab (as if Americans were anti-Arabs), they talk like gossipers not like clear-free-minded critics. CNN and BBC world spread a phallic (imperialist) image I can’t relate to even if they pretend they are moderate and liberal. The problem with the moderates and the liberals is that they are hypocrites and demagogues, politically correct which means not smart and not sincere, one day ‘up’, one day ‘down’. I looked for Artists and I found FOX. I always thought I would vote ‘democrat’ if I was American, I finally could distinguish that the true Democrats in America are the Republicans -who know that the price for Paradise on Earth can have a high price sometimes (when diplomacy has failed and friends became betrayers) : Death; Death for Democracy, not for Communism or Islam.
In my own visions for Humanity I also hope and dream that the domestic policy of G.W.Bush will make miracles as well and that these Tax cuts…will be one more true answer to these endless questions of economy and that finally and once forever this solution will bring lightness and work and creativity and more growing businesses and new self sufficient free citizens: The miracle will be complete and the economical and political program and success of this government will be such that it may be exported to the world and Democracy will prevail and everybody will finally live free, free from their State, and aware that they, each citizen, have the responsibility to grow, for their own sake, become Men and Women, not complainers and “victims” of some abstraction they call Capitalism, ready to fight for their own dreams, read the right books (Jack London should be first on that list with Martin Eden and The Valley of the Moon), connect with the true God, not the Popes, free themselves from all the slave-traders of their lives and manipulators: fathers, mothers, brothers, churches or mosques, their Justice and their Government, newspapers and T.V. when they preach Dogmatism and maintain their submission to wrong causes and to wrong Gods …in other words, free themselves from their own ignorance and darkness; and recognize that the only valid and revolutionary leadership and political system is the Capitalism “made in USA,” where true individual freedom and liberty is offered to all its people, without abolishing the challenge of life who can last a life time and is called the Spiritual war of all spiritual warriors or ‘Samourais’, ready to confront their own mind and their own darkness to reach the light and the true knowledge which will help them distinguish God’s words from Evil’s words, a true friend from a betrayer, art from its imitation, freedom from slavery, true Kings from courtiers, Jesus from his so-called disciples/friends (read the miraculous book written by Francoise Gange, “Jesus et les femmes”), Manners from Morality…
As long as the International community through the UN will not decide to legally —and practically- put an end to all Dictatorships across the globe, war seems to be the only answer for freeing these oppressed people. Today Jacques Chirac wants to create a strong European Army to “balance” America. Does he want to replace the old USSR? What’s his point? He is very clearly separating politics from economy, principles from business.
Where is his intelligence?
It is sad to believe that everybody has lost his mind and fights for the wrong causes everywhere. So much confusion is tragi-comical. But the oppressed world can only count on the United States of America, always did. The difference today is that the USA is no longer ready to let any other nations rule its moves, fearing their threats (black-mail, terror, misinformation campaigns…). And because if God has let the tragedy of 9-11 happen, it was not because America deserved the attack, but because the free East, who has been shut down since few decades by the domination of an Islamic authority and its current uneducated leaders, needed its only true superior friend, America, to take action against that domination and rescue and free and bring light, life, knowledge, beauty, colors, respect, Freedom and Truth in the Heart and the Mind of all these nations.
One more thing, if America has so many enemies inside the (Muslim) world, it’s also because of America’s friendship with Israel and her faithfulness. If France is playing such vicious game in this global battle for Freedom, is only because when Courtiers, not Kings, lead the show, nothing good can appear. As Edgar Allan Poe wrote: “Never Bet the Devil your Head”. I don’t care for Jacques Chirac’s head but because of his wrong choice, America has heavily paid the price of that bad choice since decades amongst the Arab world. To balance his sleeping with Evil (Saddam…), France had to offer the Arabs a speech where an external predator and enemy was to be found and showed with the finger: “le capitalisme sauvage” and America, “pro-Israel and anti-Muslims”. It feeds perfectly well the nationalist feeling of the masses and their hatred for Israel. To the point that even their so-called open-minded intellectuals think America has long teeth and “no mercy for its own economic interests”. But this is the description of France, not America. What blocks the chance for French enlightenment and awareness is her arrogance and her true belief that Americans are intellectually and culturally inferior to them. The same illness affects the Iranians, the Turks, the Arabs,… Instead of seeing in America the master it is, detached but generous, humble but aware of her own Superiority (higher than the UN), they prefer to call it uncivilized , because in their laziness, it’s easier to put the blame of their own incapacity on an external force, especially if it is as successful as America is. They would be right if the USA was arrogant, selfish, and untrue; it is wrong since the principles and the values of America are vital for her own growth; where healthy economy, True Democracy, human rights and individual Freedom are the interdependent conditions to insure the success of each one of these notions, separately, and together.
Now, if you are interested in me and want to help me get out from here with my paintings and my good words, you will have to go to Lou Reed, ask him what he knows about me and how together we want to play a role in that fight. Also, he will be able to show you the pictures of my work, including the symbolism of the two flags.
Right now he began his summer tour, but FOX is surely able to contact him everywhere across the globe. Ask any of your New York reporters to find him, like Geraldo Rivera or Eric Shawn if they liked the idea.
I am a true aware fan of Fox News and since we have the same initials, I may sign with that name on my paintings. If Lou agrees. A statement, full of meanings and a short cut to clarity :
Fox News (c)
(acid pop artists)
Here is Lou’s address in Manhattan:…
Don’t contact me or publically name me before you could contact and hear Lou himself please. My power and my Truth can not be exposed without him and without your own acceptance and understanding of this link.
I have been mentioned last year in a book, by Terence Ward, ”Searching for Hassan”. I met Terry Ward in Iran during his trip. In few lines, he symbolically described our encounter in Tehran, at a mutual friend’s house + my American Flag painting + my source of inspiration : Lou and Jean-Michel Basquiat. But of course, he hasn’t developed the question of the meanings of the flag. They would “cut my head” if they could hear what I have to say. He just gave my name, Fariba. Beside that publicity, nobody really knows me, fortunately. And as long as I am not safe with my paintings in New York, nobody will know about me, my work and my words.
I hope that my integrity, my clarity and my high goals in life have also touched your hearts. I am ready to pack but I have unlimited patience and will wait until the door to Paradise will be opened to me; and finally be able to become, at my turn, a Voice for Freedom and Justice. And be the only eastern soul who has the guts to openly condemn Islam, male ignorance and male chauvinism and Mafia mentality of these same men, as the true only causes of the regression of the third world countries; the true battle between Knowledge (lightness) and Ignorance (Barbarism/Terror/Hell).
With Love,
Tehran, may 6, 2003
PS. Forgive me for all my errors of English”
LE MOT DE LA FIN DES FINS:
a) “Fernandez (to be exact) voleva col rou-lé.”
b)http://neoneocon.com/2011/03/30/walmart-and-the-women-and-the-law/#comment-333724
… Somehow, I feel very light knowing that my time has come and that I can let go of this never ending addiction, called ‘About Me’. I have no intention to start another YouTube address (plus it’s getting harder and harder to get the new rules and get through anyway). Nor start a Facebook page.
Knowing that I have accomplished my part makes it easy to turn the page. Also I know that this time I don’t have to make any other move. It’s whether people got it or did not. Free to choose. While I’m free to quit, wait and see. Or not see but move on to a new place and new life.
BE HAPPY AND BE CREATIVE, ALL!!!!!!
(FOREVER LASTING UPDATE!)
‘Let’s Have Some Riots.’
http://www.instapunk.com/archives/InstaPunkArchiveV2.php3?a=2775
A MESSAGE TO ALL :
http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2012/04/06/it-seemed-neater/
http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2012/04/07/the-unforgiven/?singlepage=true
JUKEBOX:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcDn7nkMuk8&feature=mr_meh&list=PL4B6AD2E31FECD304&lf=plpp_video&playnext=0
(… UPDATE SUITE)
TOP CHEFS, FROM NOW ON, FOREVER:
http://neoneocon.com/2011/03/30/walmart-and-the-women-and-the-law/#comment-340520
AS A BONUS Now that I am on TWITTER and reorganizing my files, I wish to add this letter from me to IP two and a half years ago — contains many more valuable tips and clues:
(FEB-9-10)
“Thank you IP. I have no anger (not anymore), only occasionally when I am confronted to evil and those who would blindly support it.
I am the more balanced person I know. A bad day trip only serves as a catalyst for me to express and make public one more revelation of some sorts. To unmask various plots – abstract or specific. Because otherwise I wouldn’t dare/care/know.
That “scary version” of yesterday is just that: scary version. Something I never personally felt was happening. It was obvious to me that Lou was playing mute for all the reasons I wrote. If there was malice in LA of any kind, Lou would sense it (me being involved or not). But hell is exactly that, in one form or another or intensity: reality is blurred and what you know for solid truth turns in your mind to its opposite. And there is no way you can fight that truth/lie for the time of the experience because God is in command of our brain and if he wants to rig the system for few hours or less, He can. You don’t lose your own capacity to judge but some parasites are in control, not God anymore. He doesn’t exist at all, actually, quite hellish feeling. It’s madness on sane people. If Lou rejects me, I would get there again. I can’t control it. I was built that way. God knows it too. He told me so after all. At full speed. And my body responded.
I was initiated by God. I wouldn’t mind at some point be the Dalai Lama’s roommate I thought. The only wise person around. Because I got tired of listening to people. Then it took me by surprise. I never took yoga class or met a so-called guru. Or went to India etc. Not my thing. That’s hippie stuff to me. I also need to trust people, fully, like family.
I surely trust you – mind, heart and strength.
God taught me life the hard way. What happened on my paintings helped me understand a lot also about how things work. I had also a 3 or 4 months preparation thanks to CH. Who could hear and see spirits. So I had spirit helpers coming for me. With messages. My beloved grandfather was one of them. And the evening of oct 25th 1998: Jean Michel Basquiat, for the first time. It felt natural for me but WOW!! I was finally found and saved. Even if he didn’t say openly all the reasons he was there, other than help me become Painter and expand my style. CH. could see them all. Then the day of Thanksgiving while we were drinking, laughing and cooking our two turkeys the whole afternoon, at my place, with CH. and N. – my last thanksgiving dinner by the way -, once N. went home to get ready for the party, CH. stayed a little more and then for the first time said: God is here. I didn’t utter a word. Just listened and wrote down what I heard like I used to before. It’s not that the tone or the message was so much different – I already had an old sage who called himself the guide of my destiny, brought to me by my grandfather supposedly, from Safavi era, called himself Abbas Khan, playing that part – but I hadn’t so much connected the dots or maybe never thought there would be such direct intervention/honor. There was no face; just the sound. CH. doesn’t hear words by the way, it’s wavy sounds she can translate. And they always make sense. Sometimes she stays with us and can hear what she says, sometimes she flies away and have a nice time somewhere herself. Once I heard about her explanation, I said to her: please stay each time because I want a witness. I learned later that she missed some precious parts in the past. That’s why she also interpreted differently my experience, especially after Lou continued ignoring my letters and simple requests, or all understood and heard that LA and he were together. They all thought I am fabulating. I am not and it is not in my character.
Thanx to the dialogues, I received some keys that helped me understand few important things before the visions/Jumping/Schooling/breaking would start; me, alone in my apartment. I also would have to “smoke grass a lot” (that was JM’s tip) – I always liked better, or trusted more, marijuana smokers (but never bought any myself, God told me: do it. WOW!! THANKS. No guilt trip???). And Iran at least gave us back our school days, with more power and without the school part. And also, when I would be ready to start a ‘big picture’ painting where JM would come thru and paint thru me while I would fly to the other side and see THEM, which I was not really ready for and it didn’t happen that way either. Nor the painting part: I mean it is not that you feel someone else is painting for you. All the struggles were mine and that one stayed unfinished for a year and a half. Until it was completed. But the message itself was sent as another secret/clue. Anyway I still call it designed by God because all the images you must learn(/accept) to see (it is easy for *me* to see them) can only be done by a higher power. Even the smartest man on earth couldn’t consciously create those. And anyway, I paint abstract paintings. And I never know where I go. In fact there are many layers to my paintings. Anything that I can’t keep (for aesthetic and harmonic reasons) has to go. Which makes it richer and deeper.
But that understanding + many other experiences the visions taught me made me accept (and I mean: it is a sure fact for me, people can believe whatever they want, I am just happy for myself that I know that as a certainty, and it was definitively a question I wanted answered for myself) that we are all living our life as God has thought it, planned it, written it, dreamed it. Taoism says the same thing I believe, but how far it goes in this belief I don’t know really. It’s not that there is not free will. It’s all about our free will and hardship, awakening and all the rest but we are God’s actors and players -predestined and pre-programmed to behave and think a certain way: the famous archetypes. I believed in reincarnation already, none of my helpers questioned that, quite the opposite. Not that I care so much for life. In fact despite the fact that I know my future is rosy (I know I am ending for paradise). They promised it to me and I paid the price for it. I also visited that wonderful place where you are surrounded by your Beloved and Joy, Laughters and Beauty only. And it’s forever. But despite all that. I said to God (in my head) if I have to go another time for this kind of destiny and then initiation and re-experience horror and nausea, I would gladly take eternal death/sleep forever. Life is not worth the price of hell. I want none of it. The world is not worth it. By the way, no way devil has a soul. They just look real. The useful idiots?, it depends on the useful idiots, it’s on them to prove us wrong. And then I hope there are many extras (not bad, not good). Just not real. Is that or life is a horror movie. And we are all (many) treated like animals. I prefer to believe this is the secret. I don’t need to share that part with everyone else actually. They would kill and abuse more randomly. Not that it will ever become easy to detect the real from the fake or absent/dead already.
The other very hard thing God imposed on me – but now I am completely used to it, like a second skin – is that he placed my two lovers inside my mind very early on. Able to hear all my intimate thoughts, memory, past, present and future, daily activities, interactions etc. Plus I had them lurking at me every minute of the day (thru my third eye and inside my thoughts). Even if you know it can be a clone and it is not happening really that way. You can not escape the feeling, the embarrassment, anything. I had no problem having JM and Lou inside my mind in an abstract way because I trusted them and felt we were one – that’s the truth about true love – but nobody, especially when we haven’t had the chance to meet and live together yet, would feel comfortable about that level of intrusion. Anyway, that was one kind of therapy. And it was mine. I was blessed but for sure the initiation became quickly very hard after everything was at first absolutely wonderful. Now all those days are behind us. God sends me Lou in my bed every once in a while too. (once a month maybe). The visions were divine cartoons. What a treat. But for every time I passed thru light, I had to pass thru fire and hell 10 times more. Not of the worst kind I talked about yesterday, but miserable moods and negative visions, fears of the worst types (all abstractly but very real, including how it feels to be a Jew in Hitler’s Germany). I experienced cosmic loneliness, absence of God/mocked by my own Lovers/them ridiculed by God. (And I couldn’t count on my mother neither, she would panic and make it worse if I had told her and if she had been around – she was not, she was in Belgium at the time – Life took care of all the details). That went on for about one or two years. Then I had other challenges: Deal with my family/mother. She is fiery/moody and she can’t let go power easily. I had to break the sacred but loving and oppressive family abstract ties. That was hellish for me but I had to do it. Only God could help me free myself from my chains. My mother will always be the only person in my family I can really count on. My father also died few years ago. So freedom came with a heavy price but that’s the law and I definitively needed to free myself from the family guilt trip. Too much compassion I had. It was my own jail.
Also as you have noticed despite all the informations and apparent confusion, I made a bet. Stated loudly long ago what Lou really believes politically, who he truly loves, why he plays ‘dummy’ etc. I openly asked messengers to ask Lou a simple yes or no. He would answer yes I am sure. But I never got any answer at all. The messengers then disappeared. Some I still have the email and continue to send them posts, although in general they should even have access to my email password. So does Lou. Not that I even thought he needs the information himself. Between JM and all our helpers, this is the least difficult for him to get.
So if you are not Lou, and I wouldn’t mind neither because that’s a lot of work he is doing all day, all night and I know he does that too but there should be a limit to the expectations, then I’ll send you some pictures too or maybe not after all. And anyway I want to make sure that I don’t believe LA is a dominatrix. She is a Friend. We have bigger fish to catch. On the other hand, the opposing sides may have few of those…
I’m not angry (or am I?), my own writings make me laugh out loud when I forget about the tragic part or scary angles and once I am again in a safe place. Especially some of them. Because the truth has always funny explanations and images. If one dares to connect the dots. Which is YOUR specialty. Let’s not forget that!!
Thanx for what you are ready to offer. Your posts are part of my daily vitamins!!!! I LOVE them ALL. I also enjoy it more since I dared to send my first post.
Let’s just say that, for now at least, I am sure you are not L.A. (the ‘imagined’ one that didn’t exist anyway). That’s an improvement.
It is very simple, the only reason I would say you are not Lou is because of the amount of work involved. Despite his having surely many allies and friends and staffers but still. God’s help too. I also expected him to do all the things you are doing, so forgive me if I can’t completely ignore the possibility. But I have cooled down on the matter. Yesterday morning was my second bad day. I slept and woke up with a slight dizziness, so I knew I am not finished. I had to spit it out for posterity and make things clear. I have the obligation to talk quite a bit in order to introduce myself fully each time. I am happy I’m almost done and you are still there. Why wouldn’t you? I am your truest fan already. And I’m not of the pushy kind.
I will remember your advise while starting this new round. You can never be sure about the next wave anyway. And I am light already. I woke up light. And I received the feedback necessary.
L o v e y o u anyway if I may! It can’t be otherwise for me to trust. So thanks.´´
The online version of THE BOOMER BIBLE doesn’t include the two prefaces to the book. Understandibly. Mystery and sacredness go hand in hand. Since they contain valuable clues, I once last year posted them myself here. That and other revelations I had put into letters sent years ago to my few NY witnesses. After few months they all disappeared and I understood it was the webmaster we recognize as God who did the trick. So I wish to try to post at least the two prefaces one more time for those who really can not get their own copy of the BB. Read them quickly because we never know how long they can stand here. Granted I can post them in the first place. If you don’t hear from me, you’ll know why.
SECOND PREFACE
The package was wrapped in old burlap and smelled of rotten hay. It was tied up with four knotted-together railroad bandannas that disintegrated under my fingertips when I tried
to loosen them. The fabric that had been crumpled inside the faded brown knots still glowed red, like artificially preserved flowers. And inside the burlap bag was the object I had spent almost three years looking for – not one, but two manuscripts of the fabled Boomer Bible. At times over the many months of my search, I had almost given up hope of ever finding it, and even when I held it in my hands I almost couldn’t believe that it really did exist.
That day, I promised myself that I would see it published, even if I never made a nickel out of it, because here was proof that the punks of Punk City had done what the stories said they had. It was all true. A bunch of born losers had tried to write it all down the way they saw it and heard it from the Baby Boomers.
Before I go any further, I should tell you that I don’t pretend to be any kind of a hero. I’m a free-lance journalist by trade, and when you’re on your own you have to find your own stories. Sometimes you scoop everybody, sometimes you get taken in: I’d be the first to tell you I’m not proud of the UFO paperback, and I wish I could unpublish it for the sake of my credibility about this work. But I can’t undo what’s been done, and so you’ll just have to believe me or not. But Eliot Naughton should learn the same lesson: he can’t unwrite the Boomer Bible by wishing it away, and he’d do everyone a favor if he’d quit trying to deny its existence.
The truth is, I’d heard about it for years, little snatches of conversation, hints from people who might or might not know, that kind of things. I’ve always hung out in the wrong kinds of bars, all the way from the combat zone in Boston to the Sunset Strip in L.A., and if you frequented places like that you’d find there are stilll punks out there, jangling their heavy metal jewelry, painting their identities on with stage makeup, and pretending as much as they can that the bus never left town without them a dozen years ago. I happened to be in one of those bars on a rainy night in 1987. The city was Cleveland, and the hour was late, and, yes, I had been drinking. A sixteen-year-old girl with braces on her teeth and earrings made of razor blades told me that if I was really a journalist, I should buy her a beer because she knew a story worth a million dollars. I bought her the beer because I’m a sucker for wild stories – not because I believed her – but she proceeded to tell me things she couldn’t have made up. Most tantalizing about her account was the sensation it gave me that she was repeating exact words memorized from some other source. I still have the dictaphone tape I made that night, and her nasal singsong twang still gives me chills when I hear it speak, muffled and slurred under the clatter of beer mugs:
“… was February and snow had fallen throughout the evening, a light white coverlet softening the sounds and edges of the streets. The tire tracks of the bikes, the footsteps of the punks were etched in the whiteness with the clarity of pure terror, and the silencing snow so muffled the voice of the Duke’s challenger that I wondered for a moment if I imagined it.
But as everyone looked one to another, searching for the source of the voice, four masked men dressed in black stepped out of the [indecipherable] doorway and crossed the street through the snow, silent as wraiths… “Downcount the seconds, Hammerhead,” the voice said. “You don’t ‘a many left…” The Duke roared and swung his weapon above his head… “Who’re you?” he demanded of [indecipherable] … “The last voice you’ll ‘ear,” came the reply. With that, the Duke bellowed and ran toward his opponent, twirling the hammer about his great round head so quickly that it glittered like a halo. When he fell upon the punks’ new [indecipherable], though, he was as cold and efficient as ever, looking for openings and avoiding mistakes. For perhaps a minute, they both bobbed and weaved like prizefighters, feinting and waiting for some instant of advantage. Then the Duke struck a short terrible blow directed straight down upon the head of his shorter opponent, and a gasp rose from the punks as if squeezed from them by the force of the hammerstroke…”
I don’t know how long she could have continued like this, but I blew it. I interrupted her to ask a question, because I was gripped by an eerie conviction that I had heard the story before, or dreamed it, or… who knows? I had to hear where she got it, where it came from.
“It’s talked about in the Boomer Bible too,” she told me, as if that explained everything.
“What’s that?” I asked her.
“It’s a book the ka punks wrote,” she said. “They wrote everything down, the way they heard it from the Boomers, and the way they lived it on South street.” Without pause, she slipped back into her singsong cadence, someone else’s words: “Then they shredded the pages and gave them to the winds of the Delaware with the body of the dead king. And when the words come together again, the ka punks will return to tell their story. But as long as the queen sleeps, a thousand silent voices will churn above us in the air, windblown, restless, like smoke from the Shuteye Train…” She broke off, saw her beer mug sitting on the table, and drained it. Then she looked at me as if I had been the last to speak.
I tried to restart her on the story she’d been telling me about the Duke, but she shook her head and said, “It’s not there now. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. It’s not from the Bible anyway. It’s the ka song of the Greatwing Gypsy, beloved of the queen.”
I bought her more beers, which was a dicey thing because she wouldn’t talk without beers, and she couldn’t handle it, either. I managed to glean from her that the “ka punks” had lived in Philadelphia for a time and then had gone away. The very last I got from her is still on the tape, a slurred reel of names unwinding as she fell asleep:
“KinesisApesNamesGodsLiesGypsiesMesopotamiamsGreeks1Greeks2BarbsChristiansBubitesGiantsSplorersSpicsFrogsBritsKrautsYanksBeaks…”
I made sure that her friends would drive her home and then I left the bar and Cleveland. When I returned to the same bar some months later to speak with her again, no one remembered her. But that’s the way it’s been ever since she first started me on my search. Many times I gave it up. I told myself there were no “ka punks,” there was no Boomer Bible, but as soon as I had resigned myself to failure, something else would happen to rekindle my interest.
For example, I had just given up for a second or third time when a sweaty bookkeeper drinking late in some Holiday Inn bar outside Chicago called me a “dirty Boomer” and when I asked what he meant by that, he replied, “You twelve. One dash four.”
“The Boomer Bible,” I said out loud.
“You think it doesn’t exist, don’t you?” he asked, echoing my last conscious though on the subject. “Well, you’re full of shit. They wrote it down. Just the way they heard it. Somebody had to.”
We talked until the bar closed. He looked to young to be a Boomer, and after his intial outburst he was reluctant to say more, but I kept after him until he eased slowly into his story. Back in 1981, he had been enrolled in a small business college in Philadelphia. In the single most courageous act of his life, he had visited South Street in response to an ad on his dormitory bulletin board. The ad offered free drinks all night to anyone who would consent to be interviewed about topics of “general knowledge.” The interviews would take place in a South Street punk bar called the Razor Café.
He got drunker as he told it, which seemed to be a pattern with the ones who thought they knew, a kind of drowning sadness that might be the cause of their delusions or the reason they possessed their few frail straws of “information.” It was impossible to tell. But he had been sad then too, the way he told it, and although he was afraid to go to Punk City, he went in the hope that something remarkable would happen. He decribed a city within a city, an armed camp where every face was covered with mask or makeup, and every belt held weapons. He was “interviewed” by three punks who asked their questions from a list and painfully wrote down his answers in a crabbed shorthand. They prodded him to tell them what he knew about history, books, movies, religion, science, his upbringing, his views about life. They were polite, utterly distant, and persistently clumsy with paper and pencil. But once, a fight broke out at a nearby table, and he was terrified by the speed at which blades flashed into view under the blue barroom light.
“Then she came in,” my bookkeeper said, and I recognized the look in his big damp eyes. It was adoration. “She’s dead now,” he added in a whisper. “You won’t believe me. No one ever does. But there are women… well, have you ever just known the first time you saw one that you’d do anything…?”
I jus looked at him. I hadn’t, and he saw that I hadn’t. He gulped more of his drink and went on. “She came to my table. She leaned over me. She had eye makeup on one eye. Just one eye. She was wearing a leather thing… below… and she didn’t have any… top.” Then he added hurriedly, “But it wasn’t just that. She looked at me. Women never look at me. She said that what I was doing was a big help. ‘We’re writing it all down,’ she said. ‘It’s time.'”
He looked at me miserably. “When she left, I stared after her until I could breathe again. So did the punks. They all looked like I felt, just… sick with wanting her. They said her name was Alice Hate. I never saw her again. I would have died for her. I never thought I’d be willing to die for anyone…”
Then he leaned close to me, buddies in a bar. “They say,” he whispered, “that the punks will come back someday. Alice Hate too.”
We stared at each other. Gently I asked, “Who’s they?”
He stared at me uncomprehendingly, “It’s a crock of shit,” he barked suddenly. “She’s dead. I can feel it in here.” He tapped his breast pocket. “I’ve got to go,” he said, getting to his feet.
“One last thing,” I asked. “That quote. How did you get it? Have you ever seen the Boomer Bible?”
And then the bastard smiled at me, a Cheshire-cat-I-know-something-you-don’t-know-grin that pissed me off almost as much as my discovery that he’d left me with the tab.
And that’s the way it went. Of course I went to Philadelphia, and everybody everywhere said they’d never heard of the punks of South Street. But how can you tell in a big city? Maybe everybody you talk to just got there yesterday. Maybe there are things they don’t want you to know. The police were no help, but cops never like talking about things they can’t control and don’t understand. I checked the newspapers, all four years worth, and I found one mention of punks in connection with a prominent writer from New York, but he wouldn’t return my calls or letters. I got his address and went there to see him, but no one answered the doorbell. It was on my way out of the city, though, that I went to the men’s room at Grand Central Station in New York and found something interesting. Underneath a string of four-letter-word grafitti, I saw a neat red inscription: “Rules. 11.1-4.”
When I checked the Cleveland girl’s dictaphone tape, I almost missed it, but the second time through I heard it:
“MallitesMainlinersBroadStreetersRationalizationsBandsBoutsDoubtsRulesBeliefsAngels…”
I stayed in New York for a full week, looking (I admit it) in dirty men’s rooms all over the city for more quotes. It was at the Port Authority bus terminal that I found the next one. Under a scratched-in couplet that read “Fix your stroke, Do coke”, someone had written in a wild red hand: Angels.8.2.” By then, I had transcribed the names of the books from the tape, and I felt vaguely stunned. Was I creating my own mystery, my own chain of misunderstood coincidences? Or was it really possible that an unpublished book was floating around in the damaged minds of sad people? I left the Port Authority still musing over my puzzle, and it was only some minutes later that I remembered the need for caution. The streets were dimly lighted and I started feeling nervous, as if I was being followed. I heard a very slight jingle, like keys in a pocket. Then I heard footsteps, chuckles, more footsteps. I was being stalked. Trying to remain casual, I turned the first corner I came to and walked into a blind alley. When I whirled in panic the entrance was blocked. There were three of them, kids with knives. They were smiling. I saw the open jean jacket of the leader, a washboard stomach with crossed slash scars on his white skin. And it’s a funny thing, but the thought that popped into my head just then was that I wasn’t ever going to see the Boomer Bible, as if that were somehow more important than my fear of death.
I seemed like an hour went by. I just stood there. I felt my knees trying to buckle. Why didn’t they just rush me and get it over with? I wanted to offer them my wallet but I couldn’t speak. I opened my mouth to address the leader, but just as the first sound came from my dry throat, his eyes suddenly filled with fear and he backed off a step, as if he’d been struck in the face. And then all three of them turned and ran like hell. A surge of exhilaration galvanized my vocal chords. I wanted to yell after the retreating muggers, and I heard myself shouting, “Angels! Chapter eight! Verse two, you [expletive deleted] sons of bitches!”
And I still didn’t know if I really heard it, but I would swear on any Bible you believe in that a voice behind my back whispered, “Rules eleven. One dash four.”
I was so petrified by this that I could not turn around. I stood there for five full minutes, a potbellied statue in an alley, until I remembered that there might be other muggers out there, too. I never did look back as I walked out of the alley.
It was three weeks later that the package arrived at my home in San Francisco, addressed to me in block print letters. At six in the morning I heard a loud knock at my apartment door, and when I opened it, the burlap bundle was just sitting there waiting. There was no return address and no postmark. As soon as I saw what it contained, I called building security. It’s supposed to be impossible for anyone to get past the lobby door without being buzzed through, and everyone who enters the lobby is photographed by security cameras. But the guard on duty said no one had been in or out on his shift, which started at four A.M. I mention these matters only because I did make an effort to determine how the package was delivered, including canvassing my neighbors to find out if they’d heard or seen anything unusual, but I must report that it remains a mystery, no matter how many suspicions that raises.
The manuscripts were in poor to fair condition. The one on top was in much the better repair, which was fortunate because it contained the intercolumn reference reproduced in this volume. It was legible throughout, although there were many water stains, and some small animal had chewed a chunk out of the upper right-hand corner, which just missed damaging the text all the way from Kinesis through Psongs. It appeared to be a computer printout: the serrations left by tractor feed strips were still evident despite the weather damage.
The other manuscript was in truly tragic condition. It had been hand-written on high-quality parchment, with full and quite elaborate illumination. But now it was in ruin. Many of the pages were merely fragments, between 50 and 80 percent destroyed, as if by rot. This manuscript also lacked the intercolumn reference, and its inclusion in the package suggested to me that it was a genuine historic artifact, perhaps one of the original copies employed by the punk community in its own public rites and ceremonies. Sadly, though, it could no longer be read as a text of the Boomer Bible. I set it aside for safekeeping, where it remains to this day, along with other documentation of my search that cannot yet be disclosed without danger to certain living individuals.
The computer-printed manuscript was in no danger of being further damaged by reading, and so I sat down at once to work my way through it. I had read about a dozen pages when the phone rang. A male voice at the other end spoke to me in a tone of breathless excitement.
“You have it, don’t you?”
By now I was past being surprised. “Yes,” I told the caller.
“You don’t have to read it consecutively,” he continued. “You can, but it’s not necessary to start that way. And you may want to ignore the intercolumn reference the first time you read any passage. You can go back to that later.”
“Have you read it?” I asked.
He chuckled. “No. I can’t wait.” Then he turned grave. “You have to get it published as soon as possible. They’ve already found the trove, and they’re trying to suppress it. You’re the only one who can keep them from getting away with it.”
He dodged all of the rest of my questions but the last one: “Are you a punk?”
He laughed out loud. “No,” he told me. “But I’m ready to start anytime.”
It was a pattern that was to recur over a period of a week or more. I read and I fielded phone calls from a staggering variety of callers, representing all ages, both sexes, and dozens of different ethnic and national origins. They always knew that I had the Boomer Bible, and they always had a reading tip they wanted to pass on. An old lady told me in a solemn whisper that it was okay to laugh – which I had already figured out for myself. A young man with a strong Hispanic accent begged me not to ignore the intercolumn reference. A retired priest suggested I pay close attention to the readings specified in the Table of Harrier Days. Not one of them had actually read or even seen the Boomer Bible. None would tell me how they had learned of it in the first place – or how they’d known to call me.
When I’d finished my first reading, I knew that it had to be published. Some sizable but invisible group of people were waiting for it, and they were counting on me not to let them down. What were they waiting for? The Boomer Bible was by no means the answere to all questions. It was repetitive, inconsistent, often inacurate, mercurial and capricious in its viewpoints, frequently nasty, loaded with imprecise lowest-common-denominator language, and sometimes outright offensive – even to me.
And yet it excited me. The punks who had written it (and I no longer doubted the punk origins of the work) believed that the very largest philosophical questions ever conceived where everybody’s business, and they were unafraid to jeer at the ivory tower intellects they thought had answered those questions wrong. The book made me feel important and powerful, and that was a unique feeling for somebody who had lived on the tattered edges of self-respect since adolescence. I also understood why a lot of people would oppose publication of the book on any grounds. It laughs too hard at things nobody is supposed to laugh at, which is the worst crime possible in a society that has lost its sense of humor about everything important.
I inquired about the discovery of the “trove” mentioned by my first caller. Initally, everyone I talked to in Philadelphia denied there was such a thing. When I finally found the man in charge of the excavation, he informed me that it would take years to sort things out, and the publication of the findings was years away, if it ever occurred at all. I asked specifically whether a Boomer Bible had been found. There was a pause – too long a pause, in my opinion – and then the academic on the other end of the line said, “I haven’t seen anything like that. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go.”
He asked me no questions. He had no mysteries to solve? No information deficits to fill in? He knew everything he needed to know already? Of course. He was a scholar. It was his job to make up a truth that fit his universe or not. My next call was to a publisher.
The result of my actions appear as you see here. Contrary to Professor Naughton’s devilishly clever deconstruction of the facts, the bulk of the evidence suggests that punk writers wrote the Boomer Bible. And while there remains many unanswered questions about who they were, where they came from, and where they went, they have left a record of an inquiry that no one else seems interested in making: Where and how do we learn to believe again in the future, with hope and faith in the meaning of our own existence? For this unforgivable sin, they are deemed “deviant”, and their work is adjudged “contemptible.” Maybe that will be your opinion too after you’ve read the Boomer Bible. That is your right. But I at least believe you should have the chance to make up your own mind about that, provided you can look past Eliot Naughton’s preemptive and scornful bias. The things we don’t dare talk about or write about or think about are the things that will do us in. The punks seem to have known that instinctively. But then, as Eliot Naughton has pointed out, they had the advantage of starting their quest as semiliterates, which probably saved their minds from the proper Harvard education Eliot seems to regard as a necessary writing credential.
In closing, I will state that I have received no compensation for the Boomer Bible manuscript. I will also admit to knowing more than I have said, which you should know to expect from the author of an UFO invasion book. Dismiss me all you like. Believe Eliot Naughton all you like. But read the Boomer Bible. It was written for you, and it is yours to do with as you will. I have done what was asked of me. Yanks.153.14
Frank Frelinger
San Francisco, Ca
April 1991
Speaking of Eliot Naughton, here is his take, as envisioned by RLAIRD. So that generally speaking, there is no real need for future critics to add their predictable two cents. It’s already done, wonderfully, by RLAIRD:
FIRST PREFACE:
For a dedicated scholar of American literature, there can be no more difficult task than that of introducing an obviously inferior piece of writing to the reading public. When the situation is further complicated by the fact that the content and tone of the proferred work seem premeditatedly designed to offend almost every ethnic, religious, and gender constituency in the population at large, one is hard-put to know quite how and where to begin. Nevertheless, extraordinary circumstances have resulted in publication of the contemptible document that presumes to call itself the Boomer Bible, and it would be unforgivable to release it to an unwary public without some explanation. It has therefore fallen to me to write this preface, which I undertake with a sense of commingled trepidation and outrage that are unique in my literary experience.
I have determined to begin my unwelcome task with the strongest possible warning to those readers whose sensitivities are less impervious to injury than stainless steel. Make no mistake: it is well nigh impossible to think of a racist (or otherwise ethnocentrist), religious, or sexist slur that is not enshrined in what passes for the scriptural language of the Boomer Bible. Nor is this the only offensive element of this work. For it would seem that the author(s) of the Boomer Bible were resolved from the start to libel everything they touched, with special malice reserved for all subjects pertaining to the twentieth century. Indeed, it is quite literally impossible for any contemporary reader to work his/her way through this assemblage of bile without encountering multiple instances of insults that seem deliberately calculated to offend his/her race, his/her religion, his/her profession, his/her taste in literature and art and music, and/or his/her preferred lifestyle.
The very fact that such a warning is needed leads inevitably to the question of what purpose is served by publishing the Boomer Bible at all. The answer to this quetsion is not an easy one to summarize in simple terms, however, because it relates to the circumstances under which the Boomer Bible was purportedly written, as well as the circumstances surrounding its “discovery.” We shall discuss both of these in turn, beginning with an explanation of what is presently known about the work.
In all probability, the manuscript that gave rise to this volume is almost exactly ten years old. The original date of publication is given in the epistle dedicatory as April 19, 1981, and thus far at least, no compelling reason for disputing this date has been uncovered. Scientific analysis of the paper and ink also seems to confirm that the manuscript is at least eight to ten years old. That said, however, there is little else about the Boomer Bible that is not suspect in one way or another, including the identity or identities of its autor(s), the means by which it was allegedly written, and even the authenticity of the manuscript that has given rise to this volume.
Those who claim to know the truth about this work have declared it the product of a renegade literary community that was entirely contained in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, between the years 1979 and 1985. And to be sure there is a certain amount of evidence to support this contention. It is known, for example, that the historic but economically depressed South Street section of Philadelphia may have served as the base of operations for a particularly virulent offshoot from the punk music fad of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Further, there exists some documentation indicating that these alleged South Street punks considered themselves writers and carried out a form of vanity publishing to disseminate various works of “punk fiction” among themselves during the years in question. And perhaps most strikingly, fragmentary records of this so-called punk writing movement do repeatedly refer to a Boomer Bible written by the collected efforts of the entire South Street community.
Given this basic context, it is hardly surprising that amateur literati would regard any manuscript bearing this title as, ipso facto, the work of South Street’s punk writers. Unfortunately for those who would ascribe authorship of the Boomer Bible to this community, however, punk records make so many extravagant claims as to shed doubt on everything they contain. For example, a variety of punk documents acknowledge that the overwhelming majority of the South Street community (which, in their hubris, they renamed “Punk City”) could barely read and write in the early months of 1980. This deficit was supposedly overcome through what is described as an “orgy of learning” led by a punk king named St. Nuke, who ruled his subjects with an almost unbelievably primitive legal code. Called the NukeLaw, the code featured such barbaric anachronisms as duels to settle civil disputes, trial by combat, public whippings, banishment, and even sentences of death, although these were allegedly reserved for outsiders.
Spokepersons for the Philadelphia Police Department deny out of hand any possibility that such a deviant separate society existed, or even could have existed, within the limits of Philadelphia, and such declarations are convincingly confirmed by Police files, which contain no record of punk arrests inside “Punk City” for the full four-year period in which they supposedly held sway on South Street. Although there is record of a gang war on South Street during the winter of 1979-80, there is no evidence whatever that punks were involved. Roland Belasco, an acknowledged expert on Philadelphia gangs, scoffs at the idea that South Street’s punk rockers could have waged a war against any gang in the area: “Not even an army of punks could stand up to a Philly gang for more than about ten minutes,” he declared in a recent interview, laughing out loud at the thought. “The gangs I know would make a punk ‘king’ eat his crown and then cut his throat while he was choking on it.”
As if all this were not sufficient to cast doubt on the veracity of their self-history, punk records make the further claim that their writing activities were carried out with the aid of powerful computers that enabled four or five members of a “punk writer band” to write together on hand-held input instruments. The central computer that received this input was allegedly powerful enough to correct and collate their work into coherent pieces of writing, and during the effort to write the Boomer Bible, one computer is reported to have corrected, collated, and edited the work of two thousand writers into a finished work that punks proponents believe to be reduplicated in this book.
On the face of it, all of this is absurd. Despite its grievous flaws, the manuscript that appears in this book could not have been written by semiliterate children, no matter how many computers they had. There is no official record (outside of the delusionary self-histories referenced above) that such a community ever existed in the first place. There is no official confirmation that punk “stars” mentioned in the Boomer Bible manuscript – including St. Nuke, Alice Hate, and Johnny Dodge – ever lived in Philadelpha or anywhere else. Indeed, the only possible connection between Punk City and official records concerns the band known as the Shuteye Train, although the discrepancies between police files and punk documents simply could not be any greater that they are on this point.
For example, the punks claim that the Shuteye Train consisted of four individuals named Loco Dantes, Reedy Weeks, Pig Millions, and Joe Kay. These four were said to be quite literally immortal: they were believed to represent “the invincible heart of Punk City,” although even punk documents concede that they never lived on South Street and visited only rarely.
Police files depict the Shuteye Train in wholly different terms: as a syndicate consisting of four loosely connected criminal organizations that heisted huge quantities of both drugs and cash from drug dealers throughout the Middle Atlantic states. Over a five-year period in the early 1980s, numerous arrests were made of alleged Shuteye Train functionaries, although no confessions of such tie-ins were ever upheld in court. Ultimately, according to anonymous but reputable police sources, federal drug enforcement organizations designed a sting operation that apparently put the Shuteye Train organization out of business for good in 1984.
And where does all of this leaves us? There is, to put it simply, no proof on any kind that a community of “punk writers” occupied South Street in the sense, or on the scale, we are asked to believe. Consequently, the mere mention of a “Boomer Bible” in otherwise suspect records cannot be accepted as evidence that punks wrote the manuscript reproduced in this book.
Thus we are presented with a distateful piece of bad writing that has no confirmed historical existence. And it is being published. Why?
I can only speak for my own involvement in this affair. It is true that an esteemed colleague (who understandably prefers not to have his name used in connection with this project) recently asked me to review a small trove of documents and artifacts that were found buried in the general vicinity of South Street. It is true that such of these documents as have been safely restored from the considerable weather damage they sustained suggest that a “punk writing movement” was documented, regardless of whether or not it ever existed in reality. Further, it is true that I have examined individual “punk” documents as they have been restored in order to determine whether or not they contained anything of literary value or interest.
To date, I must declare that nothing of literary value or interest has been evident in the materials submitted to my attention. If there is a Boomer Bible manuscript in the trove, I have not yet seen it or heard of it. Moreover, I am not yet satisfied in any respect that the whole business, including this book and the trove itself, is not simply some clever fraud that is being perpetrated by practical jokers of immense arrogance.
As I understand it, the manuscript that is supposed to be the Boomer Bible was mysteriously conveyed by parties unknown to a free-lance tabloid journalist whose greatest previous claim to fame was a book predicting a UFO invasion of the planet Earth. This “journalist” now asserts that some deliberate effort is being made by the “academic-intellectual establishment” to suppress all knowledge of South Street’s punk writers, due (if I understand properly) to some attribute of the Boomer Bible manuscript that people like myself are deemed to consider threatening in some way.
Despite this rather odd sponsorship, Workman Publishing has decided to proceed with publication of the so-called manuscript. As it has been explained to me, Workman takes no position on the authenticity of the manuscript and is publishing the work because the “idea” of a defunct, phantom literary movement is “intriguing.” While I can not share this viewpoint, I have agreed to write this preface so that the reading public may hear firsthand that there is no conspiracy to suppress so-called punk writings. The text here included should lay to bed all suspicion that any writing of value is being withheld -deliberately or otherwise – from the American audience.
I will also state that if and when a new literary movement does emerge in American literature, I am quite confident that it will come from some source other than a tribe of uneducated street children who duel with sharpened screwdrivers and write bibles on subject of which they are profoundly ignorant.
Still, in consenting to write this preface, I have also bowed to the publisher’s request that I provide the reading public with some basis for an informed response to this work. My own recommendation is no response.
As to the work itself, it has no merit of any kind: it is an imitation of a farce of a parody.
The book consists of a Past Testament, a Present Testament, a Book Of Harrier Brayer [sic], and a Punk Testament. All three “testaments” are written in a meandering chapter-and-verse format that is hard to dignfy with any such term as style.
The Past Testament purports to cover the entire history of the world, from the creation through c. 1964, although the near total absence of dates, as well as numerous chronological inconsistencies, require that this be characterized as an educated guess. The Past Testament also contains a number of books that appear to be an incompetent attempt to mimic the Old Testament books of wisdom and the books of the prophets. Most notable in the Past Testament are its nine books of the “Chosen Nations,” which may well be the most pointlessly venomous pastiches of modern history yet recorded in any form.
The Present Testament represents an inexplicably perverse plagiarism of the New Testament of the Bible, complete with four gospels of a substitute messiah named Harry, who is clearly an outright fiction devised by the author(s). The Present Testament also includes its own epistles, written to various neighborhoods and institutions in Philadelphia, for the purpose of instructing its targets in the ways of the Present Testament’s demented, drug-dealing messiah. Overall, it is difficult to find any part of the Present Testament that merits serious critical analysis or comment; for the simple reason that it never rises, even momentarily, above the level of invective, name calling, and race/class/gender prejudice that represent the only unifying feature of the Boomer Bible. As for the attached Book of Harrier Brayer, I found it altogether unreadable and can offer no elucidating comments of any kind.
The Punk Testament is clearly intended as some kind of vindication for the excesses of the prior testaments, but it does far more to reveal the benighted lives and ways of the legendary (real or fictional) ‘punks” than it does to explain the purpose of the book as a whole. For example two of the twelve books in this testament amount to nothing more than lists of alleged combats in Punk City, including blow-by-blow descriptions of numerous contests in arms. The testament concludes with five books of pathetic doggerel intended to define the philosophy (for want of a better term) of the author(s).
Finally, there is a running intercolumn reference which makes connections, in astonishingly tedious quantity, between verse fragments throughout the three testaments. Personally, I found this aspect of the book unusable and utterly pointless. I can only assume that its inclusion was intended to enhance the scriptural appearance of the text by providing a visual distraction from the incompetent versification and meager vocabulary that deface every page of the work.
I expect that the publisher will be disappointed in this preface, but I cannot in good conscience endorse a book of such dubious origins, particularly in the absence of any redeeming qualities in the writing or content. If the trove materials eventually disclose a Boomer Bible manuscript and evidence that the punk writer community did in fact exist, I will be only too happy at that time to revisit my current historical characterizations and amend them in light of new information. But if the trove yields another copy of this same work, I must forewarn one and all that the only retraction I will feel obliged to make concerns my remarks about its authenticity. And mere authenticity cannot bestow quality where none existed before.
Eliot Naughton
Cambridge, Ma
March 1991
Last piece of the puzzle, the few emails I sent to my then few American and Persian witnesses and/or messengers and friends. These revelations should at least explain how and why Lou could behave the way he did, how and why I’ve been so bold and patient for so many years and after so many refusals or, seemingly slaps in the face. Frankly if you ask me, I’d prefer it wasn’t so, that the story never was the way it is told. Not to change the deepest meaning of it, just the horror show that has in my mind never been a gift to civilization in the first place. Surely something to remember but not something truly inspiring, more like another free ride for blasphemers, tyrants and psychopaths. As for us, God made us live and pass thru all the nightmares just the same, abstractly, spiritually, physically (the worst kind: a nausea that comes during a very short trip to Hell — hell being that God isn’t there anymore inside and outside your body and soul, to protect you and keep you warm, loved and secure and sane. Suddenly you are surrounded by ugliness, negativity, a lonely lost soul in a far away lost land, it is still you but you have been abandoned and there is no way out. God doesn’t even exist or he just doesn’t care, it’s devil that runs the show, always did, always will. Your two lovers are even there in the back of your head laughing at your misery the way they laughed at Jesus. This whole story was just a joke on you anyway.) After that short trip (happened 2 and a half time to me in the period of one and a half years, more or less), although I am begging God to come back quickly and stop my sickness, I start reminding Him that I am the last person who should be sent to hell, that I love God with all my being etc. But it’s useless. What I learnt from it was that Hell doesn’t exist, not as a real punishment anyway. I think only healthy pure and high beings are to experience it, for the knowledge/power and the spiritual training it provides. The second thing I said to God when it started was: please God free our world from so much sufferings, horrors, abuses of the innocents. The loathsome nausea I would feel (and also faint) was the result of God showering me with all the negativity present past and future existing in the entire cosmos. That’s the image I came up with. Acts of tyranny, violence, imprisonment, torture, rape… I even thought I don’t think even Jesus had it so bad and yet while I said to God if I am to relive such horror in another life or as payment for some future paradise another time, put me out of it. I’ll gladly choose forever death. I don’t need to live happy if I know that these horrors still exist for me or for others. Of course one constant prayer of mine since the first days of my Initiation has been for Jesus not being beaten tortured and crucified. Knowing that the spiritual part would remain, only the actual physical suffering and torturing could be spared. The soul leaving the body during the last hours/days of his ordeal is one way. The other way is that those times are abstract knowledge anyway and nothing is what it seems to be. The world as Illusion, as it is expressed in Buddhism is a hint. Doesn’t make the experience of life less scary nor serious. Still we are to learn how to stay light under pressure and stay as happy and confident as possible, aware, kind and compassionate also. Then not dumb or vain. There is a path and there is a goal and a challenge and a mission, individually, collectively. But the message is one. Also devil only exist to serve as teaching device (It’s not real). We give him power, we lose. The world loses. And the useful idiots who make his bidding should be treated like the parasites they are. They act as enemy for as long as they are under devil’s spell. It is up to us to inspire them and make them change side. While freeing his victims, slaves, zombie army. Bringing them to light. It’s not about one race superior to another but one ideology/religion or another having dumbed down entire countries and civilizations. Now the West is starting her own decline with the advancement of progressivism/Marxism/Statism/Atheism/Intellectualism. Well the old gangsters and mafiosi of yore are back to life. One ceasar following the next, starting year zero with Obama. After one hundred years of preparation/longMarchThruTheInstitutions.
… I will stop here now, let’s see if I can post my comments and if they will remain still this time, not like last time (one year almost exactly.)
MARS 11 2002
@sisterrayenterprises:
Dear Ms. Groubert [Lou’s assistant at the time],
“I am happy to hear that my friend F. finally
managed to reach you on the phone and that you
have asked me to contact you directly through your
email.
Two years have passed since the day you received Terry
Ward and authorized him to send me your office
address. Two years have also passed since I sent you
the complete file that explained who I was and what I
was doing.
A year later my other friend Reza (with whom you also
spoke on the telephone) came to New York and thanks to
the help of George Rush from the New York Daily News
we know that the same file (without the pictures) was
given to Lou in person by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.
Two months ago Terry Ward’s book was published and my
“search for Lou” was also mentioned inside.
Now that I have involved the whole world in this quest
of mine, I suppose my time has arrived to receive an
invitation to meet Lou.
As I have done before with regards to all my
correspondences, I will forward this email
to my two chosen witnesses in the US
(George Rush and Terence Ward).
Thank you for accepting to play your part in what may
appear to many a crazy game.
I look forward to hear from you and Lou.
Fariba”
Email To Terence Ward, Beth Groubert George Rush and few personal friends:
“MAY 24 2002
My name in that past life was Marie Magdalene & Lou and Jean-Michel were Jesus.
If you want to understand the personality of JC and his true essence + the complete historical context, you can read the miraculous book (but it’s in French), released one year ago, by Francoise Gange : “Jesus et les Femmes”.
Now I don’t need anyone’s intervention no more because by pronouncing these few words I am myself opening the door to Paradise for us three and authorizing real life truly happen to us; together forever; no more sacrificed, nor slaves.
Maybe now you can also explain to yourselves the “forced silence” of Lou, as I wrote in one of my emails to Terry last year. Because so much beauty and logic couldn’t stay ignored by anyone, especially an authentic king like Lou – humble, generous, real, free.
So as Lou wrote in his song “On the Run” (TIME
ROCKER), 1997 :
“… I see pain in your eyes
And you know I sympathize
I’ll come runnin’ the game is won
I’ll be there on the run”
or in ”Big Sky” (ECSTASY) 2000:
“… Big news they’re out of their heads
Big big big news let’s fuck them instead
there’s a big joke did they think we were monks
But they can’t hold us down anymore…”
and about the ‘Taboo Subject’ of Laurie A, there is “Mad” (ECSTASY):
“… I know I shouldn’t a had someone else in our bed
But I was so tired so tired
You said you’re out of town for the night
And I beleived in you
I beleived you
And I was so tired
It makes me mad
It makes me mad
Dumb…”
In “Power and Glory” (MAGIC AND LOSS), 1991-92 :
“I was visited by the Power and Glory
I was visited by a majestic hymn
Great bolts of lightning
Lightning up the sky
Electricity flowing through my veins
I was captured by a larger moment
I was seized by divinity’s hot breath
Gorged like a lion on experience
Powerful from life
I want all of it-
Not just some of it…”
in “Magic and Loss” (song) :
“When you pass through the fire
You pass through humble
You pass through a maze of self-doubt
When you pass through humble
The lights can blind you
Some people never figure that out
You pass through arrogance you pass through hurt
You pass through an ever-present past
And it’s best not to wait for luck to save you
Pass through the fire to the light
As you pass through the fire
Your right hand waving
There are things you have to throw out
That caustic dread inside your head
Will never help you out
You have to be very strong
‘Cause you’ll start from zero
Over and over again
And as the smoke clears
There’s an all-consuming fire
Lying straight ahead
… When you pass through humble
When you pass through sickly
When you pass through
I’m better than you all
When you pass through
Anger and self-deprecation
And have the strenght to acknowledge it all
When the past makes you laugh
And you can savor the magic
That let you survive your own war
You find that fire is passion
And there’s a door up ahead not a wall
As you pass through fire as you pass through fire
Try to remember its name
When you pass through fire licking at your lips
You cannot remain the same
And if the building’s burning
Move towards that door
But don’t put the flames out
There’s a bit of magic in everything
And then some loss to even things out”
… and “The Adventurer” (SET THE TWILIGHT
REELING), 1996 :
“… You’re an adventurer
A turban wet wrapped ’round your head
On the mountainside they predict your death
Oh how you fool them all
But subjects are a poor excuse
When what you really want’s a muse
An inspirating knowledge of what comes before
Speed of light
The momentary flicker of a candle
In its wicker basket
Smoking wax-facts!
Did you find that superior knowledge
that eluded you in college
Did you find that super vortex
That could cause your cerebral cortex
To loose its grip
You’re an adventurer
You were out looking for meaning
While the rest of us werte steaming
In an urban pit
An adventurer
You enter as I’m dreaming
I wish I’d never wake up
Differentiating scheming from my one true love
You’re an adventurer
You love the angles and the cherries
The height and width of levies
The natural bridge and tunnels of the human race
You’re an adventurer
Nothing seems to scare you
And if it does it won’t dissuade you
You just won’t think about it
You dismiss it and defocus
You redifine the locus of your time in space-Race!
As you move further from me
And though I understand the thinking
And have often done the same thing I find parts of me
gone
You’re an adventurer
And though I’ll surely miss you
And of course I’ll survive without you
And maybe good will come of that
But at this point I anticipate some grieving
And although I know your leaving
Is a necessary adjunct to what we both do
An adventurer
Splitting up the atom
Splitting up the once was
Splitting up the essence
Of our star-crossed fate
None who meet you do forget you
My adventure
My adventure
My adventuress”
I anyway have to thank you for accepting to be my
witnesses in a true story that needed some ears to
become one day a book made of letters and emails
exchanged during these past three years. Also this is just the beginning of everything we claimed we would do, like give power and clarity to all the slaves of this world and name and condemn all the fuckers that are using God’s name or morality to mislead the people. Also I am happy to be amongst the few open-minded and fair foreigners that still believe in THE US — democracy and People — as first nation on earth (trustworthy) and New York as First City above all others.
TRULY,
fariba,
BRUSSELS,
the 24th of may 2002″
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