Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

You always go back to the barren Las Vegas desert; you like its bent seduction and rumors of big shooters dropping millions on a bad night. And you can find Frank on the radio at all hours, must be a local statute. Can't fuck with the voice of reason. And the symbols are timely. High atop one of the ghost towers erected to heaven, in the Ghostbar they put in a glass floor to remind you how far down it is.

But it was different when you went back. The Beige Hole sat eerily still. Bulldozers sat idle and half-built houses whistled wind. Rows of beige from the boom years sat empty with foreclosure notices stuffed in mail slots, all quiet but for terrible teenage rituals and wild dogs . . . There was a Big Crash, and chill winds rattle the Big House of Cards after a long, crazed orgy of debt. We could be left to cowpokes beside sand-blasted shells reading trail verse, and somewhere in the ghost-burbs a screen would flicker, coldly analyzing the Market, oblivious to its wreckage.
Bless our Market
Let it blow bubbles
Correct us southward
Bless the predators
Bless sacred greed
In greed we trust
Amen
Our holy pillar of faith. Subject to gross abuse, as usual . . . But watch it smart guy, you are hardly suited to lecture the world on money; you hardly have any! Would you prefer no proper economy at all? To slip beneath the grid in crevices of poverty and power struggle? Think about it: generations of squalid violence, child soldiers, girls forced into the sex trade, hired strongmen, secret police, mass graves and even genocide at the extreme . . . Of course not. How foolish of you to poop on the sacred, though also recognize that the Market Machine actually caused some of that misery in its headstrong youth.

It grinds on and growls, grows unstoppable and spits collateral waste, and tries to replace old religions with its own, plays the former against themselves . . . So we ask, how deep is the reservoir? Will the Machine burn through assets like some juiced-up sprinter in a marathon? Strip the rock until it's a waste-hole out of some dystopian movie? . . . Ah, but now is no time to think small. Maximum extraction is it. And think how efficient it would be if we aced the last two-bit stragglers. Curves would shoot up and get high, except nature abhors shooting curves. What once rose steadily like a great prairie now pitches up and down like the jagged mountain west.

But no matter. The Market is hard, but fair. And the Beige Hole isn't bad; we've had worse . . . Remember the Rust Belt? Now there's a fine desert, with blackened, gothic ruins and hellfire crucibles under fresh snow, and checkerboards of shot-out panes on line houses starkly outlined on a steel-faced sky, where we used to make steel, or gaskets and gears in factories going south. Out in redrust country the badlands leach color in afternoon. You can watch the mounds darken to morose old mills, as a soft diesel breeze blows and wild dogs commit unspeakable acts in crumbling filth . . . And clearly, the Beige Hole is nothing beside that grimness.

Yet it's still a pain in the ass. It messed with your road . . . And there it is, your agenda in this sudden rant. And maybe so. But even objectively the ghost-burbs are an invasion. They are ripples of a larger issue, namely that earth is overrun . . . And it's true, since 1968 its human population doubled to seven-something billion. Not only that, but we damn near blasted the joint into a big poison fireball, because we can, although the Big Buildup was more about dick-waving than number pressures. Two teenage hoods in hotrods screaming down a country road at each other, a game of thermonuclear chicken.

In the postmodern bloom numbers come at you, megatons and trillions, comical and unintelligible. They attain a level of art in their numb, brutal magnitude. In fact one guy harvested their transcendence in an exhibit that featured a frame of Snoopy and Charlie Brown made of 166,000 packing peanuts, the same number as packages sent each hour by air in the United States. This terrible exhibit also had a Coke logo made of 106,000 aluminum cans, the same number tossed every thirty seconds, and it claimed that two million plastic bottles are set free each five minutes, and that 60,000 plastic bags are liberated every five seconds, and it of course showed us what 28,0000 42-gallon oil barrels look like, the quantity of oil burned every two minutes on this long freedom road . . . Sweet Jesus, fourteen thousand barrels a minute? No, that can't be right.

And you blame the entire quandary on Vegas, which interrupted your road with needless sprawl, which is unacceptable out this far past the edge of trees.

yeah, I saw last week "Earthlings" and some days after that a taxi driver who worked in the cows bussiness until three years ago told me about who are the frigoríficos owners in Santa Fe ... I guess I´ll be soon completely in the way of veganism in the Land of the Meat ... (I´ll still have to deal with Monsanto´s rizomas, though ... )

I enjoyed reading the Beige Hole road-trashing-drama, gracias for sharing it with us!

gracias arcadia.

holy frijole !!

14,000 barrels of oil--each and every minute !! (??)

my gawd ....

An honest look at what to us Brits find fascinating. I don't we in the UK have the same dislike or fear of socialism as you do in the US or the same thumbs up to the Markets. I like this.

thanks terry.

the Machine has indeed indoctrinated us into a deep revulsion at even the mere hint of anything socialistic, tiz true.

a lot going on in this piece-- i hope not TOO much-- my initial (and ongoing) disgust at finding las vegas utterly overbuilt (by corporate house-building juggernauts) and sprawled out into the foothills. (i had actually planned on moving there).

and then, the DRAMATIC collapse of the Big Bubble (fueled by greed and corruption), and then wondering if we are fundamentally going about things in the right way ... but then, ultimately is there any better way other than the Market Machine (assuming the gross abuse could be weeded out-- BIG ASSUMPTION) to FEED this giant human explosion happening right before our eyes ?

kinda overwhelming if you dwell on it too much ....

Your poem covers the issues well. We in the UK are experiencing( well since the collapse of industrial profiteering) the largest house building(private housing, not too much social housing) since WW2. I guess the housing market and the money needed to buy(banks and building societies at the ready) is the next big money making area. Unfortunately, the bubble burst, and the money boys lent money to those who wanted the houses but couldn't affrord to pay the cost. Repossession of houses in the UK has recently reach a high. Supply and demand law: keep the balance between the demand and supply. if the demand is higher than the suppy prices rise; if the supply is greater than the demand prices fall. Getting that balance is the problem I guess.

awesome-

nice-

It grinds on and growls, grows unstoppable and spits collateral waste, and tries to replace old religions with its own, plays the former against themselves . . .

God and Golem Inc.

I read somewhere the universe is beige and smells like raspberries.

Nice work, I envy your stamina, the way you sustain it, I wish I was half the writer you are.

thanks jack. i think i've tinkered with this one long enough.

here's the latest. i even added a few lines from a kerouac poem (dharma bums) ....

But it was different when you went back. The Beige Hole sat eerily still. Bulldozers sat idle and half-built houses whistled wind. Rows of beige from the boom years sat empty with foreclosure notices stuffed in mail slots, all quiet except for the terrible teenage rituals and wild dogs . . . Like Jack himself mused in California, way back when this sprawl was just getting started:

Who played this cruel joke
On bloke after bloke
Packing like a rat
Across the desert flat?

There was a Big Crash, and chill winds rattle the Big House of Cards after a long, crazed, drunken orgy of debt. You swear, we could be left to cowpokes beside sand-blasted shells reading trail verse, and somewhere in the ghost-burbs a screen would flicker, coldly analyzing the Market, oblivious to its wreckage.

Bless our Market
Let it blow bubbles
Correct us southward
Bless the predators
Bless sacred greed
Amen

Our holy pillar of faith. Subject to gross abuse, as usual . . . But hold it now. Would you prefer no proper economy at all? To slip into cracks and crevices of poverty? Into generations of squalid violence, child soldiers and girls stolen for the sex trade, hired strongmen and mass graves and all the rest? . . . No? Well then don't poop on the sacred. Of course the Machine actually caused some of that misery, but that's the way it goes.

The Capital Machine is a beast. It grinds on and growls, wars and whores, keeps us in cars and beer, pop-guns and bombers, the whole product line from starter models to war machines. It leverages itself on itself and spellbinds with flash, has a cure for everything and tries to replace old religions with its own, and if necessary plays the former against themselves. A precocious youth on the scene not a moment too soon, a mass-producer of shiny objects and bulging landfills, a crusader to finally set it all straight on this wonderful, godawful jumble of rock, and make a gigantic profit at it for a change. And aside from a few torched natives and multibillions in fraud here and there, it is succeeding.

And naturally, instinctively, questions arise . . . How deep is the reservoir? Will the Machine burn through assets like a juiced-up sprinter in a marathon? Strip the rock until it's a waste-hole out of a dystopian movie? . . . Ah, but now is no time to think small. Maximum extraction is gospel. And if we took out the last two-bit stragglers all curves would shoot up and get high. Except nature abhors a shooting curve . . . They used to rise steadily like the great prairie but now pitch wildly up and down like the jagged mountain west.

But no matter. The Market is hard, but fair. And really, the Beige Hole isn't bad . . . Remember the Rust Belt? Now there was a fine, grim desert, with blackened, gothic ruins and hellfire crucibles under fresh snow, shot-out checkerboard panes, stark line houses on a steel-faced sky, where we used to make steel, or gaskets and gears in factories going south. Out on old 23 in redrust country the badlands leach color in afternoon. You can sit and watch the mounds darken and transform to morose old mills, where wild dogs commit unspeakable acts in crumbling filth and a soft diesel breeze blows. And the ghost-burbs are nothing beside that grimness.

Yet they are still a pain in the ass. They messed with your road; that's the point. Otherwise you wouldn't bring it up. And really, even objectively the ghost-burbs are an invasion, or ripples of a larger issue, namely that the rock is overrun. Its human population has doubled since 1968 to over seven billion, and we damn near blew the joint into a big poison fireball because we can, although in truth the Big Buildup was mostly dick-waving, not a population issue-- two teenage hoods in hotrods racing on a country road at each other, a game of chicken.

Numbers come at you in the postmodern bloom, megatons and trillions, comical and unintelligible. In their numb, brutal magnitude they approach ironic art. Like an exhibit you remember-- a frame of Charlie Brown made of 166,000 packing peanuts, the same number as packages sent each hour in the U.S. This awful exhibit also had a Coke logo made of 106,000 aluminum cans, the same number tossed out every thirty seconds, and it claimed that two million plastic bottles are set free each five minutes, and that 60,000 plastic bags are liberated every five seconds, and of course it showed us what 28,0000 42-gallon oil barrels look like, the amount of oil burned every two minutes on this long freedom road . . . Sweet Jesus, fourteen thousand barrels a minute? That can't be right.

You blame Vegas for the entire quandary. Escapism, like anything else, costs a lot more these days, but if sold right you hardly feel it, bathed in gleam, and man did it pull you in, a great beam of alternate reality . . . You had your fun. Rented that room with a funny smell and tried to get a little exercise. Jogged the Strip with Jim Beam in the water bottle and got as far as a huge lady from Ohio with a log cabin purse next to a giant slot machine with ten foot tumblers and jokers with Satan goatees leaping out of the bubble. Strange hissing sounds and deranged bells came from the casino underbelly of serpentine towers like funhouse mirrors a hundred stories high to a golden sky. Holy crap, what did they put in the Beam?

the blessings of fine story telling indeed

the monster- needs to be taken for a walk three times a day- i swear- it is just needed- attention for a child that needs love- this machine- needs souls and support- and well- i just will not feed it- the girl that helped motivate the island of kauai to pass the bill- has made kauai one of the first places where we the people is working- let s look at that-too easy to be like the monster and attack anything that moves-